Actress Emma Stone and her husband, comedian Dave McCary, are among the film's producers under their Fruit Tree company. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2024. It was given a limited theatrical release by A24 in the United States on May 3, with its theatrical release expanding to Canada and nationwide in the US on May 17.
The film marks the second entry in what Schoenbrun refers to as their[a]Screen Trilogy, following the film We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021) and preceding an upcoming trilogy of novels titled Public Access Afterworld.[4][5]
Plot
In 1996, isolated teenagers Owen and Maddy bond over the young adult television show The Pink Opaque, which follows teenagers Isabel and Tara as they use their psychic connection to fight the villain Mr. Melancholy, who has the power to warp time and reality. Owen's father Frank derides him for watching the show, while Maddy feels deeply connected to it.
Two years later, while watching The Pink Opaque, Owen notices Maddy crying. Maddy explains that she has resolved to run away to escape her abusive stepfather. She implores Owen to join her, but he loses his nerve and stays. Owen's mother Brenda dies from cancer, Maddy goes missing, and The Pink Opaque is canceled after five seasons.
In 2006, Owen still lives with Frank and works at a local movie theater. Maddy reappears one night, questions Owen about his memories of The Pink Opaque, and claims to have lived inside the show itself for the last eight years. She urges him to review the final episode, in which Isabel and Tara are imprisoned by Mr. Melancholy in a pocket universe as Owen and Maddy, respectively. After finishing the episode, Owen smashes his head through the TV screen in a panic, but Frank pulls him out.
The next night, Maddy explains to Owen that after running away, she continued to feel unsatisfied and "asleep". She paid a man to bury her alive; she describes suffocating before awaking in The Pink Opaque as Tara. She urges Owen to do the same to begin the sixth season of the show. Owen loses his nerve once more and runs home, never seeing Maddy again but remaining haunted by her claims.
Frank dies in 2010 and Owen's boss, Dave, transfers him to a family entertainment center. One night, he rewatches The Pink Opaque on a streaming service, but finds it to be more fatuous and juvenile than he remembers.
Owen grows increasingly miserable and his asthma worsens. In 2026, during a birthday party at work, he breaks down, screaming that he is dying and needs help, to the indifference of everyone around him. He locks himself in the bathroom, cuts his chest open, and smiles when he sees glowing TV static inside. Hurrying back to work, he offers timid apologies for his outburst.
Schoenbrun began work on the script for I Saw the TV Glow three months after they had begun undergoing hormone replacement therapy, amid what they described as "overwhelming calamity" following having come out as transgender. In featuring the transgender themes, Schoenbrun deliberately avoided making transitioning or coming out explicitly central to the plot, opting instead to write the story as an allegory so as to distinguish it from other films on the topic.[6]
Lundy-Paine cited I Saw the TV Glow as an allegory for being transgender.[13] Schoenbrun has frequently described the film as being about the "egg crack", a term for the moment in a trans person's life when they realize their identity does not correspond to their assigned gender,[14][15][16] and said Owen's choice to not bury himself alive with Maddy and ultimate existential crisis was illustrative of their personal fears of potentially living out their life without having transitioned.[6] In a June 2024 profile of themself published in The New Yorker, Schoenbrun discussed how their relationship with their family had influenced the film's story, saying:[6]
TV Glow is about something I think a lot of trans people understand... The tension between the space that you exist within, which feels like home, and the simultaneous terror and liberation of understanding that that space might not be able to hold you in your true form. I think many people, even if they are sympathetic to narratives of biological-family estrangement, still want to believe in resolution or restorative reparative work. And I think this does a disservice to queer people who are not in control of whether that work can be done.
I Saw the TV Glow is heavily influenced by[17][18] and draws parallels to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), including its use of The Pink Opaque, which features similar elements like strong female leads and a mix of mythic and monster of the week episodes. Owen is introduced to this "Buffy-esque" show that becomes a refuge for him until its narrative starts affecting his reality as the story explores loneliness and the search for something real through a fixation. The cameo by Benson, who played lesbian character Tara Maclay on Buffy, "felt healing in a way" for Schoenbrun,[18] who relied on the show as a coping mechanism during adolescence.[19] The narrative diverges by airing on a children's network and incorporating a magical realism akin to The Adventures of Pete & Pete (1991–1996).[20] Maronna and Tamberelli, lead actors of Pete & Pete, star as ghostly neighbors to explore the uncanny nature of aging. Schoenbrun emphasized that the cameos are not mere Easter eggs but are meant to deepen the film's ideas.[19]
The Pink Opaque continues the Pete & Pete effect by taking up the theme of children living in a "semi-magical, frequently scary" world unnoticed by adults. As the main characters lose or find themselves in the show, Owen's story becomes a demonstration of "what happens to a trans person when the world makes the prospect of transitioning too terrifying to ever look at straight-on".[20] Owen and Maddy represent pre and post-realization stages of identity, mirroring Schoenbrun's own journey of self-discovery. It delves into how people perceive media differently as they grow, with changes in tone reflecting shifts in understanding, and feelings of shame and dysphoria.[21] Owen experiences a sense of claustrophobia and disconnection from reality, mirroring the struggle to retain one's sense of wonder and magic in the face of adulthood. The film ends with Owen when the "world is content to ignore his screams that something inside of him is dying", and highlights the importance of "a little magic, borrowed from art, is one of the only ways to survive, and to remind yourself that – as the film's most haunting line reminds us – there is still time".[20]
The film also draws inspiration from Schoenbrun's recurring dream about the ending of Twin Peaks (1990–91) and aims to capture a "Lynchian terror".[18] Inspired by its follow-up Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), the film intertwines themes of TV series endings and revivals.[19]
The film was released in select theaters in the United States on May 3, 2024 (playing in New York City and Los Angeles),[27] with its release expanding nationwide and to Canada on May 17.[28] It was made available digitally in June 2024.[29] It was theatrically released internationally by Stage 6 Films, including Australia and New Zealand on August 29, 2024,[30][31] with Park Circus Films co-distributing the film in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where it was released on July 26.[32]
Reception
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on 224 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "With a distinctive visual aesthetic that enhances its emotionally resonant narrative, I Saw the TV Glow further establishes writer-director Jane Schoenbrun as a rising talent."[33] On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 86 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[34]
To Guy Lodge of Variety, TV Glow is "both promising psychodrama fodder on its own terms, and of a piece with the particular fixations Schoenbrun has established across their small oeuvre thus far".[35] David Ehrlich of IndieWire wrote, "Schoenbrun's astonishing second feature manages to retain the seductive fear of their micro-budget debut and deepen its thrilling wounds of discovery even while examining them at a much larger scale".[36] Some reviewers also praised the film for the authenticity with which it conveyed transgender themes, with Richard Brody of The New Yorker calling it "a profound vision of the trans experience", and Veronica Esposito for The Guardian saying it "speaks to '90s trans teens".[37][38]
Amy Nicholson of the Los Angeles Times criticized the film as a "collection of leaden scenes that might make the audience want to claw out of its own skin", noting that it "invents a new emotion: passionate ambivalence".[39] Nicolas Rapold of Sight & Sound agreed, writing that "there's the awed sense of a blueprint or roadmap that is insisted upon without entirely being executed and fulfilled".[40] Dylan Roth of Observer acknowledged this discomfort, noting that "[his] challenge with I Saw the TV Glow is that almost everything [he] disliked about it is done on purpose, and effectively. As a piece of art, [he] can't deny that it works".[41]
In May 2024, in an interview with USA Today, Schoenbrun stated that a sequel to I Saw the TV Glow was possible, saying that they'd be open to approaching the story from a different perspective.[48] In September 2024, Schoenbrun made a post to X (formerly Twitter), in which they mentioned having an idea for a sequel to I Saw the TV Glow that they want to make "in a few years".[49]
^Kay, Jeremy (February 18, 2024). "How Buffy The Vampire Slayer helped inspire Sundance hit I Saw The TV Glow". Screen Daily. Archived from the original on April 3, 2024. Retrieved June 16, 2024. A major influence was cult US TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which ran from 1997-2003. 'It was an obsession and a real balm for me in my adolescent years,' they reflect. 'I rewatched my tapes over and over again, and like Owen and Maddy do with The Pink Opaque, I thought of the characters like family. Buffy will always be an influence on everything I create.'
