‘I Saw The TV Glow’ establishes Jane Schoenbrun as queer cinema’s next big auteur (2024)

Nearly every artsy, queer cinephile is obsessed with one name right now: Jane Schoenbrun.

The writer and director’s second-ever feature film, I Saw the TV Glow—which is now available to buy and rent on digital platforms—is hitting its intended audience like a ton of gut-wrenching, reality-altering bricks. Schoenbrun, with masterful command of the movie’s despairing tone and unsettling aesthetic, guides viewers through a transformative movie-watching experience. In the era of superhero IPs and dwindling box office profits, it’s more difficult than ever before for indie filmmakers to break through to the mainstream. But somehow, Schoenbrun has done just that, and proven themselves to be cinema’s next big auteur.

Released by A24 in theaters last month, I Saw the TV Glow stars Justice Smith as Owen, a lonely, isolated kid growing up in the ’90s, who bonds with a cool, older goth girl at his school over a fictional, monster-of-the-week TV show called The Pink Opaque, about two demon-slaying teenagers. Maddy (played by Brigette Lundy-Paine) lusts after her favorite badass, monster-slaying heroine of the show, Tara. Owen is drawn to the more feminine character, Isabel. Together, both teens find a comfort in The Pink Opaque that they can’t find in their oppressive, suburban, real lives. One day, Maddy proposes to Owen they run away together. He chickens out. The show is canceled on the same day Maddy disappears. She finds him again years later, and, with wild eyes, tells him that The Pink Opaque isn’t a TV show. It’s real. Maddy insists her name is not Maddy, but Tara. Owen is not a man named Owen—he’s a woman named Isabel.

It’s at this point that viewers realize Schoenbrun has crafted a clever metaphor for the trans experience. Owen has never felt like the man that society tells him he’s supposed to be. His reality feels wrong—fake, even—because he’s repressed his true identity. Maddy wants Owen to wake up. She wants him to embrace a new reality where he can feel comfortable in his skin. In order to do that, he needs to kill this version of himself. He needs to literally bury himself alive. If he does that, then the next season of The Pink Opaque—aka the next chapter of Owen’s “real” life—will air. The question at the heart of the movie becomes: Will Owen be brave enough to do what Maddy suggests, and transition into a new life?

As devastating as the I Saw the TV Glow script is—which Schoenbrun began writing shortly after they began hormone replacement therapy—it wouldn’t hit nearly as hard as it does without the sinister sense of foreboding that Schoenbrun cultivates through the film’s production design, music, and palette. It’s a polished glow-up from the gritty, DIY feel of their first film, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, an internet horror story and a Sundance critical favorite, which Shoenbrun, made on a miniscule budget of less than $200,000. According to a recent New Yorker profile, Schoenbrun had a budget of $10 million for I Saw the TV Glow, thanks in part to Emma Stone, who produced the film with her husband, Dave McCary.

Schoenbrun put that money to good use, while staying true to their distinctive, unsettling style. From the opening image of an eerily, neon-lit ice cream truck to the horrific-yet-electrifying sight of Owen’s head smashed through a television, I Saw the TV Glow is filled with striking imagery that will burn into your brain like the static-y residue on an old TV set. The angst-ridden soundtrack includes catchy new tracks from Grammy-nominated artists like Caroline Polachek, Sloppy Jane, and Phoebe Bridgers (the latter two of whom also appear in the film for a cameo performance). The entire film is draped in glowing pink-purple-blue hues—colors that resemble the trans pride flag—and is shot in a way that reflects Owen’s uncertainty that reality is, well, real. In an interview with The Cut, Schoenbrun credited that to the built-in artifice of the suburbs.

“The most uncanny spaces were too uncanny for me to even invent. Like that supermarket that Maddy and Owen go to with those giant pictures of vegetables. The only things I asked to change were to move the meat section so we could get tons of raw meat on-camera and take down the Italian American flags and put just three American flags,” they said. “The Fun Center is a real place in New Jersey called the Funplex. One of the core goals for me was letting the suburbs hang their own noose.”

It takes a true auteur—defined as “an artist whose style and practice are distinctive”—to find those locations and stitch them together under one, consistent vibe. The phrase “Lynchian,”— referring to the surreal, rural horrors that filmmaker David Lynch is known for—may be overused, but in the case of Schoenbrun, who has specifically cited Lynch’s Twin Peaks as an inspiration for the film, it’s apt. And yet Schoenbrun has also clearly defined their own, distinct style separate from Lynch, in part by imbuing their films with undeniable queer themes. Like queer cinema directors John Waters, Clea Duvall, Todd Haynes, and many more, Schoenbrun is blazing their own artistic path that refuses to bend to the expectations of straight audiences. The result is a filmmaking style that feels revelatory and rare.

Schroenbrun’s next feature, titled Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, will, according to their New Yorker profile will tell the story of “a queer filmmaker hired to direct a new installment of a long-running slasher franchise. The director fixates on the prospect of casting the ‘final girl’ from the original movie, and the two women descend into a frenzy of psychosexual mania.”

The filmmaker’s growing fan base of LGBTQ+ film lovers are already seated, judging by the many excited posts on X. Can you blame them? Schroenbrun’s shaping up to be the next big auteur voice of cinema, queer or otherwise. No one wants to miss out on their moment.