It’s the second feature for the non-binary filmmaker and writer who is dedicated to making and supporting queer cinema. Alongside their work as a filmmaker, they are currently finishing their first novel. Their first feature was the 2021 We’re All Going to the World’s Fair also screened in Sundance Film Festival and also was about the occult and horror. The film is about a teenage girl who joins an occult online game. The film paid homage to low budget horror films. Arthouse audiences have already discovered Schoenbrun through their earlier work so I Saw the TV Glow looks to already be on the radar of hip global audiences where Schoenbrun mines familiar themes. Emma Stone’s Fruit Tree production company which backed the film will bring it further cache.

The story follows teenager Owen played by Justice Smith who is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs with his mother Brenda, played by Danielle Deadwyler and distant father Frank, played by Fred Durst. Though he feels drawn to his mother when his classmate Maddy played by Brigette Lundy-Paine introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show called The Pink Opaque. Both teenagers are loners and the show brings them together as friends. But the show is no ordinary TV series it is a vision of a supernatural world. In the pale glow of the TV, reality begins to crack. But is Maddy real or part of the show? When the show gets cancelled Maddy disappears. The story jumps around in time but is mostly set in the late 1990s and the first part of the 21th century. The influence of David Lynch is clear in Schoenbrun’s work. On one level this is a coming of age story and the role that pop culture plays in that coming of age in America.

In the earlier We’re All Going to the World’s Fair the director created a world that is bizarre and supernatural and the relationships between characters intense. Schoenbrun is good at keeping the audience fascinated but constantly off-balance. Schoenbrun, who is trans, says that their films are about putting aside preconceived ideas about gender and identity and finding your authentic self. 

I Saw the TV Glow (USA)
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun
Cast: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Conner O’Malley, Emma Portner, Ian Foreman, Fred Durst, Danielle Deadwyler