I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

It's from 2024, but it opens with a shot of a suburban street absolutely covered in sidewalk chalk. Since nobody nowadays would allow children to play outdoors and interact with public property, or get that much art down before a raging neighbor or police officer arrives, this must take place in the past. Ah yes, there we go, 1996 it declares.

An abstract teen drama, told mostly via a series of visually-stylized vignettes, about a lonely boy and a dejected girl struggling with some unspecified drama. The boy mumbles narration into the camera, breaking the fourth wall sometimes. It has a steady environmental hum, flickering blue-green fluorescent lights with red highlights, and long silences between sentences.

They're watching a very 90s TV show together, called "The Pink Opaque", about psychic girls with ghost tattoos on their necks. Their show fandom is what connects them, and serves as the weak little thread that the story is hung on. Their show-in-a-show includes a tribute to Mr. Tastee from The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and Pete (Michael C. Maronna) & Pete (Danny Tamberelli) make cameo appearances, so that's nice.

They have an awkwardly presented and executed discussion about their sexualities, I guess to justify the guy explaining to us that he's asexual and/or internally tormented, because they couldn't think of a better way to bring it up. Jumbled confusion about sexuality is the point of the film, and ham-fisted writing is how they'll see it through.

At first it feels slow and pointless; a badly told story devoid of a hook. One whole hour in it finally sets some sort of premise, when the girl asks the boy if his memories of watching the TV show feel artificial and all shaken up. It cuts to an entire music video afterwards, to let us know that just because there's a premise doesn't mean there has to be pacing.

It gets more visually stylized and less narrative. I'm sure it's all very metaphorical, but what good is a metaphor if it's boring and uninteresting? It feels like a student submission for an assignment to make an abstractly metaphorical art film. It's like Horsehead, with worse cinematography. It certainly doesn't help that the kids half-heartedly mumbling angsty monologues mostly misses.

It could have just ended on the guy screaming at children in a wild psychosis. Or it could have ended on him slitting his chest open to reveal a sparkling television. But it didn't, because it's intent on disappointing me.