Equal parts analogue horror, teen drama and trans parable, I Saw the TV Glow has spiralled into the cult phenomenon of the year.
Perhaps it was inevitable that writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, a filmmaker keenly attuned to the vagaries of online obsession, would end up cultivating a fandom of their own.
Their previous film, We're All Going to the World's Fair, depicted a young vlogger who connects with an anonymous follower over a sinister viral challenge. In their documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination, about the internet urban legend known as Slenderman, they examined creepypasta culture bleeding into real life through a collage of YouTube videos.
With I Saw the TV Glow, Schoenbrun evokes the hazy inner space between screen and reality through a dream-like, luminescent vision of 90s suburbia — an aesthetic indebted to "the teen angst video store classic", in their own words.
The sonic textures of the era are similarly resurrected by some of Schoenbrun's favourite contemporary artists, with a soundtrack spanning Caroline Polachek, Sloppy Jane and Phoebe Bridgers. As an A24 production, it marks a notable departure from the microbudget minimalism of their prior work.
The film centres on two maladjusted teens, Owen (Justice Smith; Pokémon Detective Pikachu) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine; Aytpical), who spend their waking moments in the thrall of a young adult TV show called The Pink Opaque.
For Schoenbrun, who drew upon their own formative experiences with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was important to capture "the memory of how it felt at the time to watch those shows, rather than the way they actually were".
"There was definitely this moment where you could come across something on '90s cable television that was a little weirder, scarier and maybe even gayer than what we were meant to be watching."
With its supernatural thrills and chintzy sound effects, the fictional monster-of-the-week show feels right at home among other contemporaneous childhood classics, from Goosebumps to Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Through the eyes of Owen and Maddy, The Pink Opaque is intoxicating, terrifying and complex, and a portal through which they can glimpse their true selves between the scan lines of a tube TV.
For trans people, this immediate sense of intense identification — colloquially referred to as an "egg crack" — is the moment that sets in motion a journey of gender discovery.
Schoenbrun, who had just started transitioning when they wrote the film, set out to articulate not just the tumult of dysphoria, but "the experience of slowly pulling [themselves] out of [a false reality] and beginning the process of work … working up the courage to come out into transition."
A relationship with a TV show
I Saw the TV Glow hinges upon the abrupt cancellation of The Pink Opaque in its fifth season, and Maddy's subsequent disappearance — a turn inspired by the infamously upsetting Season 2 finale of Twin Peaks, which Schoenbrun watched at the onset of puberty.
For the director, the experience of a TV show ending before its time, suspended in a disquieting irresolution, mirrored the trans experience of growing up in a body that felt uncoupled from their sense of self.
"To a lot of trans folks, certainly to me, there's an unresolved wrongness from that time," Schoenbrun says.
"I literally had recurring dreams where [Twin Peaks] would come back and it would be resolved … The way that something like that can get into your subconscious, like so much of David Lynch's work does, was a major inspiration for the film."
As an adult who now proudly identifies as nonbinary, Schoenbrun's relationship with the media that once provided a lifeline has grown more distant. They recently revisited Buffy for the first time since early transition, a process they liken to meeting up with an ex.
"I could immediately return to everything it had meant to me, how much of myself I poured into it … [All] those moments that just meant so much to me, they were my definition of being in love at one point."
While the characters in Schoenbrun's films grapple with the dissociative sensation of watching themselves on screen, the filmmaker can perhaps now glance back from the other side, where their life has "better kinds of love in it than a relationship with a TV show".
"It felt painful to remember," they say. "I felt a lot of sympathy for the kid who needed [Buffy] that bad."
Since its debut at this year's Sundance Film Festival, I Saw the TV Glow has inspired a range of fervid reactions. The film can alienate as much as it comforts, offering few straightforward answers for screen gazers, queer audiences and all others who succumb to its enigmatic allure.
"The kind of cinema that I really believe in is a cinema that lingers — that says something that's not as simple as like a moral," Schoenbrun explains — an ethos they've inherited from "so much of the art that held [their] hand through life".
"I try to make sure every movie isn't wasted. It's such hard work to make something, and the only way I know how to do it is to make something incredibly personal that people can engage with in a very deep and, hopefully, visceral way."
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I Saw the TV Glow is in cinemas now.
