Review #279: I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Gabe’s Supplemental Horror Review #2 - I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Let me pose a question (and then I'll explain what I mean later in the review): Can a movie get a pass purely due to the message or metaphor of what it's portraying, or are the actual events in the portrayal itself, important?

I Saw the TV Glow is a film that came out this year, about a teenager-and-later-adult named Owen, who becomes obsessed with a TV show after meeting a schoolmate, Maddy, who is similarly obsessed. The TV show is about two friends with a psychic link who fight evil, and Maddy & Owen bond over the show and learn a bit more about themselves and about friendship as the show goes on. However, Maddy goes missing, the show gets cancelled, and Owen grows up- but when Maddy shows back up nearly a decade later, it seems that the line between fandom and fiction is blurrier than they thought.

Before I connect back to my question from earlier, I'll just say that this is a slow burn, not a lot happens during its runtime, and I really feel like it was meant to live or die based on vibes alone. And don't get me wrong, the vibes are good- the whole movie has this dreamlike quality to it (which plays into the movie's progression of making you question whether what you see on the screen is really happening or not). Even though it was a slow burn and even though not much happens in the movie, I did enjoy it and I never felt my interest wavering. But there's huge portions of this movie that are just... a person standing and delivering a monologue, a monologue detailing events that would have been nice to see on the screen, but all we got was the monologue. Maybe that's meant to play into the dreamlike quality of the film (would Maddy's monologue about being buried alive feel more or less real if we saw it happen instead? I honestly don't know) but I would be lying if I said it didn't make the movie drag on at times. Much of the film simply takes too long to get certain things across, and I really don't think it would have suffered if ten or fifteen minutes were trimmed off its runtime. (There's literally two entire song performances, nearly back-to-back, at about the midpoint of the film. I'm sure they were both meant to set some sort of mood but you can do that by showing the start of the song and then cutting away as it fades in the background, you don't need to show an entire 2-3 minute song being performed on stage.)

So again, I thought the film was good, I didn't really mind its flaws, but it certainly felt like it could have been improved by tightening up some of the technical things. Also, there were a few spots that felt like they were hanging threads that originally connected to something in an earlier draft (like Owen's boss being a total sleazebag at work) but in the finished product the most I could say is that it added a bit of vibes.

So I asked at the beginning: Can a movie get a pass purely due to the message or metaphor of what it's portraying, or are the actual events in the portrayal itself, important?

So often people will critique a piece of media strictly about the metaphor, and I find myself asking, "Okay, but was the movie itself any good?" I had a few ideas of what this movie was a metaphor for as I was watching it, and looking at the online discourse surrounding it, it seems the consensus by and large agrees it's a metaphor for transgenderism. Which becomes pretty obvious once you know that, and I'll even say it does a great job at threading the needle of making the message obvious without it getting in the way of the narrative. (While watching I also suspected it was also talking about themes of the loss of innocence as one goes into adulthood, and the question of how much value we put into media and how nostalgia colors our memories- which can all be ruined when you actually go back and re-watch your favorite childhood shows- I'm sure all of those were part of the creative process, even if the main metaphor is that of finding and repressing one's gender identity.) But as the credits rolled, I just had to ask myself, what actually happened in the narrative? Is Owen actually Isabel? Is Owen buried alive and hallucinating an illusory life as he runs out of air? What would have happened if he went along with Maddy on the football field? What the CRAP was going on in the scene where Owen's head was in the TV and why did it never get brought up again?

Now, I'm not saying the movie should have given a definitive answer to any of these questions- this isn't meant to be a judgment on the movie itself- but rather, a realization I had about the nature of media criticism. If I like the message(s) but don't feel satisfied by the narrative, is this a good movie or not?

The answer is probably in the eye of the beholder, and there's definitely space for both types of critiques. But I'm usually more interested in treating media as an actual series of events first and foremost, which makes movies where the whole thing seems to be coasting by on vibes more frustrating for me than for some people.

Anyway, I do recommend this film but you should know going in that it's a slow burn and doesn't have nearly as much substance as I was expecting.

Overall Rating: 6/10 Familiar Fonts

Who's Who: This movie has numerous cameos from 90s pop culture, including Fred Durst as Owen's dad, and both Petes from The Adventures of Pete & Pete as neighbors!