Overview & Background
I Saw the TV Glow is Jane Schoenbruns feature-length directorial debut, arriving in 2024 after multiple festival previews, and is adapted from a story by poet-novelist Zachary Lazar. The film signals a midnight-movie vibe, marrying VHS grain, synth-heavy score, and coming-of-age beats with eruption moments of flesh-wrenching horror and dark existential fear. Premiering at several major international festivals, it has drawn praise for its striking visuals and willingness to bend genre boundaries.
Set in rural Pennsylvania, the story weaves psychological shading into a landscape that quickly veers into the surreal. Identity, escapism, and the peril of obsession form the thematic core, inviting viewers to consider how fascination can morph into something hungry and alive.
Plot Summary
Sixteen-year-old Owen, played by Justice Smith, spends the long summer nights with four tightly-knit friends—Angela, Derek, Sara, and Ajay—in a town where little ever changes. United by a passion for grainy late-night television, the group tapes odd cable finds and meets each week to watch, joke, and dig for hidden meaning.
Late one night the friends tune in to a channel where nothing should air—grainy noise, distorted faces, and a dark figure flicker in and out like an old ghost story on repeat. Instead of switching to something easier, they find themselves drawn closer, as if the screen is pulling them in. Owen feels sure that the program holds secrets about him and the world, and the certainty sparks a hunger that quickly grows into an obsession.
At first the experiments feel light-hearted: they skip meals while the tape rolls, rewind it to play backward, and sit with fingers crossed, hoping for real contact. Each viewing the same episode appears again on fresh tapes, yet tiny changes show up on their skin—pale patches, faint bruises, buzzing voices in the silence, even a line that matches a mark flashed on the screen for a split second.
Angie, usually the voice of reason, begs Owen to slow down, but his mood swings spiral harder. One moment he dominates the room with stories, the next he sits quiet, his skin almost bluish under the glow of the screen. The tapes themselves start to act like stubborn pets, turning up under beds, wedging between cushions, always rewound and waiting for play.
Things turn terrible when Sara disappears mid-episode. Minutes later she stumbles back, confused and wearing wounds that throb and ripple. In that moment they see the truth: the show is no longer just a video; it is changing their flesh and twisting their minds.
The film peaks during Owens solitary rite: he secures himself in an abandoned television-repair shop, repeating the tape for hours in an effort to merge with the shows world. His friends rush to free him, yet his body seems to bond with the screen—veins aglow, voice distorted. In the final seconds, as they drag him away, crackling static swallows him, suggesting he still shares a thread with the spectral force.
Cast & Performances
Justice Smith carries the lead role with both fierceness and fragility. He forms the films emotional nucleus, shifting from awkward teenager to obsessive madman with unnerving precision.
Jenna Ortega plays Angela, the principled heart of the group. While she witnesses Owans decline, she weighs teenage loyalty against growing doubt and deepening dread.
Supporting Cast
Noah Jupe brings Derek from eager fan to reluctant accomplice.
Talia Ryder quietly reveals the eerie toll of obsession through her role.
Suraj Sharma patiently grounds the group—empathic, cautious, and modestly heroic as he tries to help .
Creature and body-horror effects are all practical, raw, and painful to watch. Makeup and prosthetics chart obsession in detail- vein-streaked discoloration and fleshy outgrowths intensify with each passing scene.
Themes & Analysis
Nostalgia as Gateway to Darkness
The film insists that what begins as a warm trip down memory lane can quickly jabber into a fixation that spins out of control. That midnight re-watch, first soothing, subtly drags its participants deeper into a shadowy underworld they never wanted to enter.
Obsession and Identity Dissolution
Owen’s arc warns that curiosity, when fed like a starving wolf, can devour the very self it once intrigued. Instead of a richer identity, he simply splinters, losing the trust of friends and even the thread of his own story.
Media as a Psychic Conduit
The cursed tape is not just a story device; it literally pours signals into bodies and minds, erasing the border between watcher and watched. In that visceral exchange, the film echoes real fears about binge culture and screens suppering our attention and senses.
Adolescent Vulnerability
The teen cast stands in for every growing outsider: lonely, desperate for a nook of belonging, and all too eager to follow the loudest voice. The show gives them short-lived togetherness but ultimately eats away the very traits that made them individuals.
Friendship and Rescue
The group gropes sideways at first, but by the climax they band together to break Owen’s chain. That united showdown shows how genuine friendship can still defy even the foulest, otherworldly pull.
Visual Style & Soundtrack
Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw bathes each shot in VHS-wrought grit: muted colors, tracking lines, half-lit corners, and the odd blown-out flare. The careful, tactile craft invites both warm remembrance and faint, crawling unease with every frame.
The score-a synth-lounge haze thickened by low drones and brief dissonances-maps the characters’ emotional arc: warm chords for teenage friendship, spectral pulses for obsession, and shrieking noise for climactic horror. Sound design deepens the medium itself: static bleeds into dialogue, acting both as signal interference and as psychic bleed-through.
Critical Reception
Reviewers lauded the films ambition, stylistic assurance, and emotional center. Justice Smith’s lead and the tight-knit teen cast were praised for anchoring the supernatural in recognizable feeling.
The body-horror effects drew notice: they are thematically layered and striking to watch, yet stop short of splatter. An 80s-tinged visual palette plus strong practical work position the film alongside recent genre hits, but its character-first writing adds a distinctive angle.
Some critics cited small pacing flaws in the middle stretch; light-hearted banter occasionally lingers before the horror accelerates. A few argued that, to keep certain mysteries alive, the story offers less backstory on the shows origins than it might.
Most agreed, however, that this studied ambiguity-no neat resolution ultimately serves its theme: an obsession the mind and body refuse to fully expel.
Conclusion
I Saw the TV Glow is both inventive and unnerving, turning the sweet pull of nostalgia into something quietly sinister. What begins as a believable story of teenage friendship set against retro tech gradually shifts into a body-horror vision, showing how media can worm its way inside and warp our sense of who we are. Guided by Justice Smiths raw, expressive lead and Jane Schoenbruns steady, confident direction, the film rises above the crowd of genre releases.
Fans of cerebral, unsettling horror that turns old ideas- childhood, VHS tapes, fading memories-on their heads will find a haunting story that lingers long after they hit eject. The movie marries a lush mid-century look with deeper psychological scares, leaving an imprint that is both eerie and emotionally heavy.
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