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<\/a><\/div>\nI Saw the TV Glow<\/i> is a foundational text by Jane Schoenbrun, an instant modern classic and a better homage to the 90s television era of Charmed<\/i> and Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/i> and its legacy and impact on fandom than anything else; especially any reboot, could ever hope. It\u2019s a film with a dark, gloomy and seedy world at its core \u2013 and we are plunged into it through the eyes of Justice Smith\u2019s Owen, whose parents are controlling, preventing him from having a social life \u2013 or at least, a stilted one. His obsession with the trailers for a TV show The Pink Opaque, about a world beneath our own and girls twinned by supernatural bonds but never meet in person, leads him to Brigette Lundy-Paine\u2019s Maddy, a girl whose hyper-obsession with the show broads on the extreme \u2013 an escape from reality for them both?\n<\/p>\n With echoes of David Lynch,I Saw the TV Glow<\/i> is an ode to the trans experience of being uncomfortable in your body and realising that it is not your body \u2013 it\u2019s an ode to the experience of not being sure who you are and not being brave enough to change given the circumstances \u2013 not everyone makes that transition. Repression is at the core of I Saw the TV Glow<\/i> \u2013 when asked whether he prefers girls or boys, Owen can\u2019t answer, he says he likes TV shows, and the inward horror of knowing who you truly are but being too scared; wondering if its too late, is reflected in him at every turn. Justice Smith\u2019s vulnerability opens up Owen in a non-traditional way, and his bond with the older Maddy is stilted at first, their shared connection between them bonding over the show and also being the few outsiders in a small town. Maddy believes she will die there if she stays \u2013 Owen can\u2019t quite embrace that yet. He\u2019s not ready.\n<\/p>\n Life goes by so fast when you\u2019re not comfortable in your own skin and the film embraces that head on \u2013 an accelerated lifestyle when you wake up and realise that it\u2019s now too late to become who you are. Lundy-Paine is superb as an awkward older teen, and Justice Smith excels too \u2013 the fracturing of their relationship is broken when the TV show, inevitably, six seasons in, is cancelled on a cliffhanger. There\u2019s a lot of commentary on rediscovering old television shows that you watched as a kid all these years later now they\u2019re on a streaming platform, and when they run into each other as twenty somethings \u2013 it\u2019s like they\u2019re clinging to something, a kind of reality that they never really knew was there.\n<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n