It’s hard to imagine we’ll get a better soundtrack this year than that for Jane Schoenbruen’s I Saw the TV Glow. Bringing together yeule, Frances Quinlan, Florist, King Woman, Caroline Polachek, Bartees Strange, Jay Som, The Weather Station, L’Rain, Drab Majesty, Sloppy Jane, and more, with Twin Peaks Roadhouse-esque musical performances in the movie, the soundtrack has now arrived digitally ahead of a vinyl release in July. Meanwhile, the film continues to expand this weekend before going wide next weekend.
I said in my review, “Utterly hypnotic in rhythm from its very first scenes, we hear a haunting motif that will return: Yeule’s cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” as Owen glides underneath a rainbow elementary school parachute. It’s a transfixing moment of color and sound and sets the stage as we’re whisked into this 1996-set world.
I said in my review, “Utterly hypnotic in rhythm from its very first scenes, we hear a haunting motif that will return: Yeule’s cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” as Owen glides underneath a rainbow elementary school parachute. It’s a transfixing moment of color and sound and sets the stage as we’re whisked into this 1996-set world.
- 5/10/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw The TV Glow,” out in limited theaters now, is about teenagers Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith), who bond over a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”-style TV show, “The Pink Opaque.” As they continue to get more into the lore of the television show, the edges blur between the reality of their lives and “The Pink Opaque.”
Schoenbrun has described “Buffy” as a pivotal show for them while they were growing up, so creating their version of that felt like giving their 13-year-old self a gift. So getting “The Pink Opaque” just right was monumental.
The premise of “The Pink Opaque,” like most ’90s shows, is perfectly silly and immediately nostalgic. Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Snail Mail’s Lindsay Jordan) meet at summer camp and realize they have an ancient, psychic connection. When camp ends, the two are able to meet on a...
Schoenbrun has described “Buffy” as a pivotal show for them while they were growing up, so creating their version of that felt like giving their 13-year-old self a gift. So getting “The Pink Opaque” just right was monumental.
The premise of “The Pink Opaque,” like most ’90s shows, is perfectly silly and immediately nostalgic. Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Snail Mail’s Lindsay Jordan) meet at summer camp and realize they have an ancient, psychic connection. When camp ends, the two are able to meet on a...
- 5/9/2024
- by Kerensa Cadenas
- Indiewire
Writer/Director Jane Schoenbrun’s feature debut, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, captured the isolating nature of online culture via creepypasta horror through non-narrative, visual storytelling. Schoenbrun continues that core theme of dysphoria in their sophomore effort, I Saw the TV Glow, now armed with a bigger budget that allows the filmmaker to get even more personal while evolving their voice and visual style to an intoxicating degree. I Saw the TV Glow offers a layered and authentic portrait of identity, wrapped in ’90s nostalgia and surreal imagery that embeds itself deep into your psyche.
I Saw the TV Glow charts the life of Owen (Justice Smith) over multiple decades, initially introduced as an early teen (Ian Foreman) in 1996. Owen is a dysphoric and friendless outcast until he bumps into a slightly older student and fellow outcast, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), at his high school. The pair quickly bond...
I Saw the TV Glow charts the life of Owen (Justice Smith) over multiple decades, initially introduced as an early teen (Ian Foreman) in 1996. Owen is a dysphoric and friendless outcast until he bumps into a slightly older student and fellow outcast, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), at his high school. The pair quickly bond...
- 5/3/2024
- by Meagan Navarro
- bloody-disgusting.com
Have you ever loved a TV show? Like, really loved it, to the point where your identity became wrapped up in it, where you engaged in life-or-death debates over characters and story arcs, strongest seasons and best episodes? Where the minutiae and the mythology of it became something between a shorthand language and a shared secret?
Jane Schoenbrun has; judging from their new film I Saw the TV Glow, their small-screen obsession of choice was the exact same as ours in the late ’90s, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Big up Sunnydale,...
Jane Schoenbrun has; judging from their new film I Saw the TV Glow, their small-screen obsession of choice was the exact same as ours in the late ’90s, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Big up Sunnydale,...
- 5/2/2024
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
Seven years after the premiere of “Twin Peaks: The Return,” and the third season of David Lynch’s small-town-turned-cosmic nightmare is still reverberating for a new generation of filmmakers.
So it’s apt that Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” a suburban lucid dream of a movie about how the media we consume can then consume us, feels like the first film to truly capture the dread and dissonance of Lynch’s reinvention — a series that was itself a comment on how you can truly never go home again, and how rose-colored memories become warped and monstrous by the passage of time.
“I Saw the TV Glow” follows Owen (Justice Smith), a gloomy New Jersey teen obsessed with a YA TV series called “The Pink Opaque,” about two physically apart teen girls who share a psychic connection that could help them defeat a moon-faced monster called Mr. Melancholy.
So it’s apt that Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” a suburban lucid dream of a movie about how the media we consume can then consume us, feels like the first film to truly capture the dread and dissonance of Lynch’s reinvention — a series that was itself a comment on how you can truly never go home again, and how rose-colored memories become warped and monstrous by the passage of time.
“I Saw the TV Glow” follows Owen (Justice Smith), a gloomy New Jersey teen obsessed with a YA TV series called “The Pink Opaque,” about two physically apart teen girls who share a psychic connection that could help them defeat a moon-faced monster called Mr. Melancholy.
- 4/29/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
When I was 9 years old, I was obsessed with the Disney Channel monster-of-the-week series, "So Weird." The show centered on a strong-willed teenage girl named Fiona "Fi" Phillips (Cara DeLizia) who used the power of information gathered from online research to help make sense of ghosts, monsters, folk legends, and other supernatural occurrences that seemed to follow her and her rockstar mom while they traveled the country on her comeback tour.
I wasn't yet a teenager and I certainly didn't own a laptop, but I could feel deep in my bones that I was just like Fi Phillips, and often fantasized what it would be like to live her life. Sometimes, the wind would blow a little too strong as I walked home from school or I'd hear a disembodied voice that was probably the result of my own imagination, and the line between my favorite TV show and my own life would blur.
I wasn't yet a teenager and I certainly didn't own a laptop, but I could feel deep in my bones that I was just like Fi Phillips, and often fantasized what it would be like to live her life. Sometimes, the wind would blow a little too strong as I walked home from school or I'd hear a disembodied voice that was probably the result of my own imagination, and the line between my favorite TV show and my own life would blur.
- 4/8/2024
- by BJ Colangelo
- Slash Film
It’s hard to imagine we’ll get a better soundtrack this year than that for Jane Schoenbruen’s I Saw the TV Glow. Bringing together yeule, Frances Quinlan, Florist, King Woman, Caroline Polachek, Bartees Strange, Jay Som, The Weather Station, L’Rain, Drab Majesty, Sloppy Jane, and more, with Twin Peaks Roadhouse-esque musical performances in the movie, A24 has now announced a May 10 release for the soundtrack, a week after the film’s limited release and a week prior to its wide release. Timed with the announcement, they’ve now unveiled yeule’s cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl,” a key motif throughout the film.
I said in my review, “Utterly hypnotic in rhythm from its very first scenes, we hear a haunting motif that will return: Yeule’s cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” as...
I said in my review, “Utterly hypnotic in rhythm from its very first scenes, we hear a haunting motif that will return: Yeule’s cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” as...
- 3/13/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
I wasn’t in the overwhelming camp of critics enamored by Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. I don’t say that to brag or even scold, but to set proper expectations as you read this review of I Saw the TV Glow. Schoenbrun’s style of borderline mournful listlessness has the structure of a neon daydream, which is fluttery and ethereal in ways that align with arthouse styles that are not meant to please all audiences. I Saw the TV Glow cements Schoenbrun’s cerebral and sobering lullaby style as a recurring signature, which I appreciate more this time. Schoenbrun understands and conveys the anxieties of existence so bluntly, albeit tuned to its own unique static-hazy frequency.
Justice Smith stars as suburbanite Owen, who we accompany through decades of his life. As a child (played by Ian Foreman), he became obsessed with a supernatural young...
Justice Smith stars as suburbanite Owen, who we accompany through decades of his life. As a child (played by Ian Foreman), he became obsessed with a supernatural young...
- 3/11/2024
- by Matt Donato
- DailyDead
Tender yet rageful, quiet yet deafening, intimate yet expansive, Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is a towering achievement of total artistic freedom, the kind of work where certain images will be eternally burned into your mind and the feelings it exudes will linger far after the credits roll. Expanding the aura of loneliness from We’re All Going to the World’s Fair into a vastly more ambitious, layered canvas, Schoenbrun’s third feature tells the story of Owen, played early on by Ian Foreman and later by Justice Smith in a revelatory performance. Following the isolated journey of questioning his identity through childhood and adulthood, we witness his special infatuation with a late-night TV show and the ineradicable bond it creates with another lonely soul, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine). The deeply expressive, imaginative ways in which Schoenbrun is able to articulate one’s struggle with identity is nothing short of staggering.
- 1/24/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
‘I Saw the TV Glow’ Review: Justice Smith in a Knockout Teen Drama About Art, Obsession and Identity
Self-discovery can be a painful process, ripping apart everything you thought you knew about the world and your place in it. But even more painful and terrifying is the denial of self. Looking in the mirror and turning away from the truth staring right back at you. It’s hard to understand why we do it — if we only get one life, why not live it authentically? And what happens to us when we live with parts of ourselves sealed away? What kind of life is that? How can anyone love you when you’re never really there?
Owen (Justice Smith) is a gentle, soft-spoken teen, afraid to break out of his shell. He’s been that way since he was a child, growing up with his attentive mother (Danielle Deadwyler) and distant father (Fred Durst). Though he feels drawn to his mother, quietly admiring her beauty and emotional honesty,...
Owen (Justice Smith) is a gentle, soft-spoken teen, afraid to break out of his shell. He’s been that way since he was a child, growing up with his attentive mother (Danielle Deadwyler) and distant father (Fred Durst). Though he feels drawn to his mother, quietly admiring her beauty and emotional honesty,...
- 1/21/2024
- by Jourdain Searles
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In the space of just two movies, Jane Schoenbrun has established a completely unique aesthetic; from the opening credits alone, a riot of black light and neon pastels, it’s obvious that I Saw the TV Glow comes from the same mind that created the trippy 2021 cult hit We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Anyone puzzled by the latter is advised to stay clear, since the follow-up is more vertiginously dizzying and twice as impressionistic, causing lots of head-scratching at its Sundance premiere. For those ready and willing to embrace its commitment to mood over logic, I Saw the TV Glow is a must-see, pairing the otherworldly ambience of Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink with the morbid surrealism of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York.
The film’s loose storyline involves a seventh-grader named Owen, a pupil at a school that appears to be...
The film’s loose storyline involves a seventh-grader named Owen, a pupil at a school that appears to be...
- 1/19/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. A24 will release “I Saw the TV Glow” in theaters on Friday, May 3.
Sinister and liberating in equal measure (and often at the same time), Jane Schoenbrun’s ultra-lo-fi “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” leveraged the inherent loneliness of webcams and the performative danger of online creepypasta into a haunting portrait of the potentially dysphoric relationship between screens and identity in the internet age. The kind of sui generis shot in the dark that feels like it could only have been made by someone who wasn’t sure if anyone would see it, Schoenbrun’s first movie is one of the rare coming-of-age films that manages to embody the full dread and possibility of self-recognition, and for that reason it almost immediately resonated with an audience of people — trans people in particular — who’d been waiting...
Sinister and liberating in equal measure (and often at the same time), Jane Schoenbrun’s ultra-lo-fi “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” leveraged the inherent loneliness of webcams and the performative danger of online creepypasta into a haunting portrait of the potentially dysphoric relationship between screens and identity in the internet age. The kind of sui generis shot in the dark that feels like it could only have been made by someone who wasn’t sure if anyone would see it, Schoenbrun’s first movie is one of the rare coming-of-age films that manages to embody the full dread and possibility of self-recognition, and for that reason it almost immediately resonated with an audience of people — trans people in particular — who’d been waiting...
- 1/19/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
It’s a typical story, one that legions of independent filmmakers have experienced since the dawn of Sundance. You pour your energies into making your debut movie — in Barry Jenkins’ case, it was Medicine for Melancholy, his 2008 lo-fi romantic comedy in which a San Francisco bike messenger and a boho young woman spend a day hanging out. Your film travels the festival circuit, you win an award or two, and after the victory lap, you start thinking about what comes next. You go to Hollywood, where you work on a...
- 10/22/2016
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
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