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I Saw the TV Glow is a tribute to the transformative power of fandom

Writer / director Jane Schoenbrun takes their “Screen Trilogy” to the next level with I Saw the TV Glow.

With We’re All Going to the World ’s Fair, Schoenbrun created an unsettling and intense atmosphere of dread by situating its story largely in a single dark room and repeatedly cutting away to videos of people participating in the film’s mysterious, creepypasta-inspired web game. But as the teens begin opening up about their everyday struggles — his father (Fred Durst) is emotionally abusive, and she isn’t safe in her own home — I Saw the TV Glow also dips into The Pink Opaque ’s monster-of-the-week reality in a way that illustrates things about Owen and Maddy that neither of them are fully able to articulate. Though I Saw the TV Glow leads with a lo-fi ’90s aesthetic evocative of coming-of-age dramas like My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks, it’s through the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-like beats of The Pink Opaque that the film comes into its own as a story about queer people finding themselves in the age of pre-internet genre fandoms.

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