When Maddy, the recognizably misanthropic teen who fuels the narrative fire of I Saw the TV Glow, claims that her favorite televised program feels “more real than real life,” there’s no mistaking her conviction. Haven’t we all been there at some point in our lives, so invested in something existing outside of the daily doldrums that its importance starts to supersede our own boring minutiae? Be it a show, book, or even sports team, the trials and tribulations of some beloved clan, whose movements seem more exciting and unpredictable than our own, start to take on an oversized weight, to the point where their victories and failures feel more genuine than our own. This level of investment treats aspiration and inertia as co-conspirators, leading to the question at the heart of writer/director Jane Schoenbrun’s latest feature; do the stories we hold most dear help us find ourselves, or stash them down even deeper?

Compared to Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), Owen’s identity might as well be buried at the center of the earth. Played by Ian Foreman in his formative years and Justice Smith as an even more cloistered adult, Glow’s protagonist is a soft-spoken introvert in search of someone to be, ambling through both school and homelife as if stuck in a fugue state. His platonic attraction to Maddy’s more developed sense of self is immediately relatable, as is his draw toward The Pink Opaque, the surrealist teen drama that has its hooks in Owen from the very first frame. A female-centric serial with enough in-world lore to inspire the official fan guide that Maddy carries around like a bible, Opaque immediately suffuses Owen’s life with meaning, wending in and around the chapters of his own story to the point where the line between the two fades into obscurity.

 Schoenbrun is no stranger to the vanishingly thin divide between consumption and that which consumes us; their haunting 2021 feature We’re All Going to the World’s Fair laid its scene almost exclusively in an online creepy pasta fantasia where its lead character struggled to separate fact from fiction. The same was true for the audience, and while I Saw the TV Glow shares plenty of thematic tissue with its forebarer, pulling us away from the computer screen and back into the world ensures that our protagonists are more than avatars this time around. The fact that we see more of ourselves in these fleshed-out characters than was possible when the whole enterprise was based on projection is a clever sleight of hand, bolstering our investment while simultaneously proving the movie’s point.

The other notable difference comes in the form of scale and budget, swapping out the less-is-more aesthetic of World’s Fair for something at once both homespun and grand, just like adolescence. Its setting in the mid 1990’s feels inspired by autobiography rather than aesthetic, with analogue technologies, retro fashions, and neon hues coalescing into a sort of misremembered reportage of its creator’s youth. The glimpses we see of The Pink Opaque are no less lovingly drawn, rendered with grainy footage, wooden performances and DIY practical effects that invoke an intersection between X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Twin Peaks. Schoenbrun puts that A24 money to good use, especially when it comes to the film’s original soundtrack, itself a vestige of a time since passed. Repurposing a familiar pop song to give your audience goosebumps at important moments might be standard operating procedure, but there’s a throwback thrill to hearing a new Caroline Polachek track, written for this specific occasion, blaring out of theater speakers. It makes the movie feel eventized.

Many of those 90’s soundtracks, as well as the movies and shows they scored, haven’t exactly aged like fine wine, but Schoenbrun isn’t here for a cheap laugh. There’s a difference between citing the importance of something, especially on a personal level, and full-throated advocacy, a distinction that Glow shows a preternatural knack for acknowledging without stooping to condescension. A late-film revisitation to The Pink Opaque threatens to tip the movie off the tightrope it’s otherwise so expertly navigated, but the otherworldly flourishes that precede it are too powerful to be subsumed. It’s a masterclass in tone, eerie and sincere in equal measure without feeling the need to couch its honesty behind a puckish dare. Schoenbrun means everything they’re saying, which is what makes the closing moments so difficult to take.

Despite being billed as a horror flick, the only thing that’s truly scary about I Saw the TV Glow is the possibility of being lost inside yourself for so long that the way out ceases to exist. In this sense, its clearest cinematic relative might be Moonlight, another woozily beautiful coming-of-age flick that warned against the dangers of waiting too long to access autonomy. Just as the ostensibly queer narrative of Barry Jenkins’ classic saw its lead stray away from his sexuality at nearly every turn, Owen’s burgeoning trans identity is more alluded to that actualized. This level of constant discomfort in one’s own skin is more terrifying than any monster or murderer could ever be, and where the coda to Jenkins film sought to soften the blow, Schoenbrun forces viewers to live with the scaring effects of sublimation. Inspiration without action has a tendency to curdle, and the fantasies we live outside ourselves are a poor substitute for the real thing.