I Saw the TV Glow

The second feature by American filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun is entrenched in the trans experience, which is not to say that it explores medical transitioning or stories of discrimination. Rather, the film takes genre templates—most prominently suburban horror in the vein of David Lynch—and reassembles them to give visceral expression to the trans psyche at its most crucial, terrifying juncture: when self-denial about one’s gender identity begins to break down. Where Schoenbrun’s previous film WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR was an ultra-lo-fi meditation on the dysphoric forces of the Internet, I SAW THE TV GLOW steps back into the nineties and early 2000s to craft a provocatively ambivalent portrait of nostalgia. Teenage friends Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) bond intensely over a television show that recalls Bufy the Vampire Slayer, an obsession that blurs the boundaries of fiction and reality and provides a kind of solace that ultimately traps its viewers in an existential limbo. Schoenbrun, a leading voice in an emergent new wave of trans cinema, channels the fever dreams of such postmodern thrillers as DONNIE DARKO and IRMA VEP, yet I SAW THE TV GLOW exists within a league of its own. (Beatrice Loayza)

Jane Schoenbrun: WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR (2021)