Lisa Johnson Mandell’s I Saw the TV Glow review says the wildly creative film blurs the line between reality and fantasy in a way that will move and intrigue you, if you just go with the flow.

If you talk to people about this film, the word that you hear most often is “weird.” I’ll admit that’s an apt description. But sometimes, and in this case, “weird” is a positive adjective, as in wildly creative and out of the box. “Weird” in a good way.

Remember, this is a film from A24, the same folks who brought you Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, a film that one slapped us in the face with wonderful weirdness.

Some call it a horror film, some call it a drama, but I like to think of it as a psychological thriller.

I saw the TV Glow review — an interpretation

It’s important to note that writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s  I Saw the TV Glow is a work that blurs line between reality and fantasy. Because of this, there’s a lot that’s  open to personal interpretation. So what I’m sharing with you is how I see it—as the story of a painfully shy and sensitive, likely neurodiverse teenager named Owen, whose real life becomes hopelessly entangled with a late night sci-fi TV show.

Owen is played with tender edginess by the outrageously talented Justice Smith, who you may remember from the Dungeons and Dragons movie, but I know best from the stellar Baz Luhrman limited series called The Get Down, about the emergence of Hip Hop, on Netflix.

Smith gives an Academy Award nomination worthy performance in my mind.

Some viewers may be become frustrated by not being able to tell the difference between what’s going on in Owen’s head, and what’s happening in the film’s ‘real’ world. I was fascinated as a trip through the mind of someone who thinks differently than the rest of us. Sometimes what they see in their minds vastly differs from what the rest of us see, and it’s important to remember that. To them, it’s very real.

An example of this is when Owen breaks down in the middle of a happy birthday song that he and the staff at the amusement center where he works are singing to a client. He has a messy meltdown shouting in anguish, doubling over and crying. Everyone else in the room freezes, not responding to him.

Later you see him in the men’s room, trying to get ahold of himself. His manager is there with him, making sure he’s alright. You realize that the troubling scene happened only in his head.

I connected with Owen and empathized with him. This is partially because of my own life-changing experiences with the neurologically divergent. My giant white Labradoodle Frankie Feldman is a therapy dog, and together we work a lot with special ed kids. Going inside Owen’s head helped me understand them better.

So when you see I Saw the TV Glow, it’s important that you just flow with its curious currents, and not try too hard to decipher it. You’ll get frustrated it you try to connect it with the reality you know. If you try to see everything through Owen’s eyes, you may find it intriguing and rewarding in ways you never considered.

Rated R

1 Hour 40 Minutes

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Lisa Johnson Mandell’s I Saw the TV Glow review says the wildly creative film blurs the line between reality and fantasy in a way that will move and intrigue you, if you just go with the flow.