When I heard this film was directed by Jane Schoenbrun, the woman who did We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, I was both intrigued and worried. While I liked World’s Fair, its vibe was cryptic and weird enough to think a follow-up could lean in too far. I like cryptic and weird sometimes… and other times it just wastes my time. This film did not waste my time.

I Saw the TV Glow is a horror-adjacent thriller about a teen boy and girl obsessed with a ’90s serialized monster-of-the-week supernatural show. When the girl vanishes the day the show is cancelled, the boy goes on with his life, unsure of what happened.

There’s a lot of 90s nostalgia in this film… and three cheers for not going 80s. The video tapes, the supernatural Buffy-like serialized show, the use of terms like Big Bad and mythology episodes, sharing episodes on VHS… it all felt familiar. Keep circulating the tapes, amiright?

The film is a phycological puzzlebox of uncertainty and paranoia. It has an omnipresent tone of worry and dread. A mix of somehow both surrealism and menace in the same scene, in the same monolog even. It nails a total and tonal vibe that is uniquely itself.

I love the mystery and the uncertainty mainly because, while it is cryptic, it doesn’t feel like they are throwing you in the deep end to figure it out yourself. It’s not clear exactly what’s going on, but it is clear what the characters think is happening. And I felt like Schoenbrun knew what was going on and wasn’t just seeding nonsense and letting the audience figure it out.

Special commendations for letting the camera sit and watch. She focuses on musicians at times, letting their songs play and linger. Or some great single take monologs that felt strange, frantic, and menacing all at once. Good on the actors for holding firm too.

I enjoyed the film’s timespan… it’s not just events that happened one summer, its a smartly expansive story. It’s timeframe introduces melancholy earned through time and error. I, personally, was never involved in a fictional, possibly real chaotic swirl of tv and real life, but I have grown old enough to feel the familiar “what if” at the center of this film.

I think some will be unsatisfied with the ending… and I thought it was abrupt and nebulous myself. But I also think I can unravel what might be going on so even if I was feeling “and then what?” I still felt connected enough to interpret a meaning.

This is a pretty great “what the hell was that?” type dreamlike film. I haven’t liked some of these types of flicks that have come out recently, but this one worked for me. It’s a genuine head scratcher that feels rooted in some kind of reality. I kind of love it.

Score: 90