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ABOUT
“I Saw the
TV Glow”
Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow” (my favorite film of their’s) follows Owen, a withdrawn suburban teenager, who bonds with an older classmate named Maddy over a mysterious supernatural TV show called The Pink Opaque. As their shared obsession deepens, the show’s fictional world of monsters and a shadowy villain called Mr. Melancholy starts to feel more real than their actual lives.
Jane actually just had a new movie come out last month, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.” While the film is beautiful and striking, it leans more into the campy, self-aware and fun slasher vibes. “I Saw the TV Glow,” by contrast, trades that playful tone for a slow, melancholic realism, using hazy suburban liminal spaces and unresolved identity to depict genuine dissociation and loss. I love Jane’s work, whether it’s a gloomy, relatable tale or a genre-savvy spectacle, between their three feature films, I truly can say that they all are some of the most unique I’ve ever seen.
“Sometimes The Pink Opaque feels more real than real life.”
WHAT
MAKES IT
LIMINAL?
This film spans between childhood and adulthood, fantasy and reality, and the life Owen is living versus the one he feels drawn toward. Its empty suburban spaces, glowing television screens, and distorted sense of time make the whole film feel suspended… like a memory or a place you can’t quite return to.
