brendan halpin

I found myself in the rare condition of being alone in the house, so naturally it was time for a horror movie on the big TV. I recently read an absolute rave review of I Saw The TV Glow, so I decided to watch that.

I should have known I was in trouble when the A24 logo came up because “elevated” horror usually means “boring” horror. But that wasn’t exactly the case here because this isn’t really a horror movie. More of a magical realism movie.

And it’s not exactly boring, but it does move very slowly. When the first commercial popped in (this is a horrible feature of MAX and I won’t be watching more movies I want to watch in this way because it sucks. Actually maybe I’ll get rid of MAX. I don’t think anybody here watches anything on it anymore. But I digress.), I couldn’t believe only 20 minutes had gone by. So yeah, it’s “atmospheric,” which means slow.

But still it’s got a very interesting premise, which is that a kid’s life changes and reality kind of cracks open when he discovers a horror TV show for tweens that he watches with an older girl he has an uneasy friendship with. At first I was like, “Oh, this movie really gets the awkwardness of teenage communication,” and then I was like, “does anyone who’s been friends for this long actually have these conversations with loooooong silences?”

Anyway, Justice Smith gives an extremely weird, vacant-eyed but compelling performance, Brigette Lundy-Paine crushes it as the older girl who has to get out of town, and it’s a smart movie, but, ultimately it falls short for me. Not just because of the slow pace, although you could have easily cut 20 minutes out of this thing and only improved the movie.

But also it does that thing that a lot of postmodern, meta stuff does, which is that engages you on an emotional level but then reveals at the end that the entire thing is an intellectual exercise.

SPOILERS AHOY!

And like, I get that the whole thing is an allegory about being queer, and possibly trans in particular—the whole thing about having to bury your old self to become your true self isn’t exactly subtle. And it’s cool and thoughtful in that way, but also? The whole 20 years later scene is dumb, especially “oh, he cuts himself open and there’s a TV inside like he’s a fuckin’ teletubby or some shit.” And so if you got emotionally invested in the story, you’re a sucker because this movie isn’t trying to tell you a story about characters you care about as much as it’s using the story to make a point. And this is valid, but it’s just not my thing.

I guess if you go into this knowing it’s an artsy magical realism movie rather than a horror movie, you’ll probably enjoy this more than I did. But I’m kind of pissed I wasted my “horror movie on the big TV” time on this.