31 Days of Halloween: I Saw the TV Glow

2023, Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going to the World's Fair) -- download

I entered into this movie, hearing only a bit of the buzz, with a concept as to what it was about... one that proved not quite accurate. I knew it was about a cult TV show that may be more than just a mere TV show, maybe one that was not quite ... real ? Like Channel Zero? And it was that, at one layer, but at the deeper layer it was more about the experience of gender dysphoria and being trans.

But let's talk about the horror movie as a horror movie aspects first, as I am not sure I am qualified to make much commentary on the actual meanings to the movie.

Owen (Ian Foreman, Let the Right One In) and Maddy are weird kids at school in the 90s. They find connection and Maddy invites him to experience a TV show she is into, a late night, sshhh-only-we-know-about-it low budget magic realism show about teenage heroes fighting odd creatures led by the evil Mr. Melancholy. 

The opening act sets the tone for the movie, definitely indie, definitely left of centre, weird and nostalgic, everything tinted in other worldliness. It wouldn't be for everyone, it would definitely be for That Guy, but it would also draw a lot of mundane viewers down the road of "I don't understand what I am seeing, but I know I am supposed to think its important". The creator has mentioned being influenced by Donnie Darko and I can definitely see that.

The movie shifts to years later, Owen (now oddly Justice Smith, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, only two years later) is still sneaking off to watch The Pink Opaque, at Maddy's (Brigette Lundy-Paine, Downsizing) place. I believe the horror is carried through the obsession the kids have for the very very bad looking show, the pink glow (yes, that pink glow) and the mild hallucinations Owen is having. Then Maddy confesses she is going to run away her abusive mother and wants Owen to come along. But at the last minute, he panics and bails. He confesses what he is doing to the mother of the child he was supposed to have been doing sleep-overs with. But Maddy does disappear, and it is depicted that its not seen as just a running-away, police tape and investigations.

And The Pink Opaque is cancelled.

Eight years later Owen lives a lonely, isolated life. His mother has passed and he is entirely disconnected from his father, an actor with nary a line, a father who he has to apologize to for coming home late, even though Owen is an adult. He works at the local cinema and is mocked by his coworkers.

Then Maddy shows up again. She tries to tell Owen what The Pink Opaque was really about, that it was not just a TV show, but... the real world? Maddy confesses to Owen that they are the main characters in the show (she does so in a bar on the edge of town; oh, look, there's Phoebe Bridgers on stage) and they were captured by The Big Bad of the show. This world, the one Owen lives in, is The Midnight Place, the scary dark realm of the show. And the only way to get back to the "real world" is to bury yourself alive. And she is going to do that soon, to go back, and wants Owen to come with her, because Owen is actually Isabel, the main character.

It is during these confessions that we get brief flashes of Owen wearing a dress, Isabel's dress from the show. There was more than just obsessing over a TV show going on in Maddy's basement. And when offered the opportunity to run away and embrace who Owen really was, he chose to stay. He chose to stay "he". Its not overt, the scenes are brief, but the disconnection you see apparent on Owen's face is terrifying, his voice thin and strained, his wheezing even more apparent.

Another time jump. Owen is in his 40s. He has embraced modern, adult, male life. He has a family (which we don't see), a career (fuck, he just works at a kiddie ball pit / entertainment zone because the movie theatre closed down) and a big screen TV. He looks half dead. He lives in the same house he grew up in, his father now also dead. The Pink Opaque is now available on streaming (so, it was a "real" show after all) but Owen sees it for what it was --- terribly low budget and badly done. 

One last time jump; he's in his 50s. He looks older, barely alive. During a kids party he has a breakdown, and... the other characters just... fade out... just NPCs without a script. We see Owen cut his own chest open, no blood, just the glow & static of an old CRT TV. Its still inside him, the "real world" but... he just leaves, meekly apologizing to everyone.

So, you may ask, where was the horror? What I recapped didn't have it, maybe a little bit here and there. But the style of the movie, how it was shot, scored and the tones all say that Owen was trapped in a world, both of his own making, and not ... real. Its too terrible a world, that initially was tinted with nostalgia for the 90s but once that has faded, the world is dark, dim, cold and empty. Nothing colourful, nothing PINK about it at all. Its fucking bleak. And the supernatural elements are very real to the movie, not just metaphors on top of the allegory. 

The director is clapping back against the response to the ending of the movie, people commenting on and complaining about its bleakness. But the salient point is that The Pink Opaque is still inside Owen, the possibility of finally letting it out, of finally embracing Isabel is there. There is always still time. Not everyone has to be trapped in an utterly mundane, middle-American, work to live, live to work lifestyle (OK, that's a bit of transference from my experience), where your true self is hidden -- you can become The Real You.

Kent's take on it, different yet more poignant.