‘I Saw the TV Glow’ Review: Jane Schoenbrun’s Eerie Ode to Adolescent Television Obsessions
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic Pretty much anyone who grew up watching television has a vivid memory of that one show that, for a time at least, wouldn’t let go of their young imaginations — characters observed and fretted over like close friends, haunting images captured and embellished over time in the mind, cliffhanger endings that hit like harsh personal betrayals.
A show doesn’t have to be especially good to resonate like this, provided it finds its viewers at the right place and time; eventually, most of us move on, that hard cultural grip giving away to the forgiving affection of nostalgia.
Heady and oneiric, Jane Schoenbrun‘s “I Saw the TV Glow” asks what happens to those who don’t — following two dysfunctional devotees of a ’90s YA fantasy series as the show continues to live inside them (or perhaps the other way round) long after its departure from the airwaves.
This 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.
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