‘I Saw The TV Glow’ Review: Jane Schoenbrun Assaults The Senses With A Trippy Gut Punch – Sundance Film Festival

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In the space of just two movies, Jane Schoenbrun has established a completely unique aesthetic; from the opening credits alone, a riot of black light and neon pastels, it’s obvious that I Saw the TV Glow comes from the same mind that created the trippy 2021 cult hit We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.

Anyone puzzled by the latter is advised to stay clear, since the follow-up is more vertiginously dizzying and twice as impressionistic, causing lots of head-scratching at its Sundance premiere.

For those ready and willing to embrace its commitment to mood over logic, I Saw the TV Glow is a must-see, pairing the otherworldly ambience of Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink with the morbid surrealism of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. (If you know, you know.) The film’s loose storyline involves a seventh-grader named Owen, a pupil at a school that appears to be named Void High and only has one other pupil.

This is Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who’s a couple of years older and who Owen first meets with her head in a book: an episode guide to The Pink Opaque, a mysterious TV show that is variously described as “for kids” and, more witheringly by Owen’s father (Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst), “for girls.” Whatever the case, Owen is too young to see it, since it screens every school night at 10:30 p.m.