Jane Schoenbrun’s ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ Earns Raves at Sundance

I will only be covering the back half of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I had to stay home this year for personal reasons — it’s the first time since 2013 that I haven’t been able to cover it out of the gate. So, expect reviews/reactions from me starting only on Monday.

We’re on Day 3 of the festival and, although it looks like a slow start, the main standout seems to be Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” produced by A24. The film is screening in the festival’s Midnight section.

I was not a fan of Schoenbrun’s last one, “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” which struck me as a tad too elaborate for its own good — and a failed attempt at pulling off some kind of Lynchian spell on the viewer. If you read the reviews for “I Saw the TV Glow,” there’s again a lot of comparisons to Lynch and the Schoenbrun again tackles some kind of possessed media.

Schoenbrun’s latest looks again to be fairly divisive, based on a few people I’ve spoken to, but the early reviews are great. It has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (8.5 average score) and 86 on Metacritic. Some of the reviews are even using the “M” word (masterpiece).

So, what is “I Saw the TV Glow” about? That’s where things get a tad complicated as there really isn’t a clear consensus about what the accumulation of all of its mysteries results in.

The gist of the plot has to do with a teenager struggling through life in the suburbs when suddenly his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own, reality and fiction start to blur.

There is currently no release date for “I Saw the TV Glow,” but I would imagine a 2024 slot, potentially in the summer, is already being eyed by A24. We’ll definitely be on the lookout for this one.