Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” which screened, to rave reviews, at this past January’s Sundance Film Festival, is now in theaters. I’ll have a review out for this one in a few days.
I was not a fan of Schoenbrun’s last film, “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 a David Lynch movie for Gen Z-ers. If you read the reviews for “I Saw the TV Glow,” there’s again a lot of comparisons to Lynch as Schoenbrun again tackles possessed media.
A major Schoenbrun fan is Paul Schrader. After seeing ‘TV Glow’ he took to his Facebook account to rave about the film and the filmmaker behind it:
JANE SCHOEBRUN is hands down the most original voice in film in the last decade. But also confounding. Do "We're All Going to the World's Fair" and "I Saw the TV Glow" have a genuine niche in the commercial indie horror market or are they unicorns? Either way, they are a wonder to behold.
Yes, Schoenbrun’s films are “original,” but they also very much follow the same blueprint (surrealist, dreamlike and spooky qualities) that David Lynch made all his own with “Eraserhead,” “Twin Peaks,” “Lost Highway,” “Inland Empire” and “Mulholland Drive.”
“I Saw the TV Glow” has been getting very good reviews. It has an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and 85 on Metacritic. Some of the reviews are even using the “M” word (masterpiece) — major fans include The New Yorker’s Richard Brody, IndieWire’s David Ehrlich, and Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson.
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 as to what the accumulation of all of its mysteries results in. It’s filled with metaphorical imagery. With that said, it’s visually stunning. The usage of purple is wonderful. It’s pure Lynchian vibes.
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, and where reality and fiction start to blur.
“I Saw the TV Glow” is currently playing in L.A. and NYC and expands to more cities this coming Friday.
While James L. Brooks teased last year that "we'll soon be seeing" Jack Nicholson, 89, act again, and that he was "reading scripts," that idea has now been shut down by his close friend Michael Douglas, 82.