“I Saw the TV Glow” is a captivating, heart wrenching film that perfectly encapsulates the lonely feeling of growing up queer in suburbia, and the confusion that comes when one doesn’t have the words to express it.

The film follows Owen, through middle school and high school all the way into adulthood, and his elusive friendship with a girl named Maddy.

They first meet when Owen is in seventh grade and Maddy is in ninth, and he strikes up a conversation with her about the book she’s reading: an episode guide to the fictional show, “The Pink Opaque”. 

“The Pink Opaque” is a young adult sci-fi following two main characters, friends Isabel and Tara, who share the connection of the Pink Opaque. Each week they fight off a new evil creature that’s sent after them by the Big Bad of the show, Mr. Melancholy.

Owen had never seen the show before, but the commercials he saw on TV for it captivated him. Maddy invites him over for a sleepover to watch one episode, and after, she gives Owen tapes of episodes. Besides their connection through the show, they don’t talk much.

Once, when Owen asks if he can come over again to watch an episode when it airs, Maddy lets him know she likes girls, so that he doesn’t get the wrong idea. He says it’s fine and when she asks him if he likes girls or boys, he says he likes TV shows, and that thinking about that sort of thing freaks him out.

Maddy invites Owen to run away with her at the sleepover, after telling him that she thinks if she stays in their town, she’ll die. At the last minute, Owen decides to stay behind, and when Maddy leaves, the show “The Pink Opaque” is canceled.

It’s not until ten years later that Maddy comes back into Owen’s life, and she reveals that “The Pink Opaque” is real – they are the main characters, Tara and Isabel, and that their lives here aren’t what matters.

This reveal also comes with spelling it out more clearly to the audience what “The Pink Opaque” has been a metaphor for – Maddy and Owen’s queer identities.

The show serves as their escape from their oppressive suburban lives, and the characters Tara and Isabel show who they truly are, who they could be.

The backdrop of the film is that of high school, of childhood – hallways filled with cork boards covered in inspirational quotes, hanging out on the bleachers, visiting the carnival. Owen works at a movie theater and a fun center.

When the characters aren’t in the fluorescent lights of the grocery store, they’re walking through sprawling neighborhoods, hiding away in basements and locked up in bedrooms.

The settings of the movie add to the oppressive atmosphere of the film – the feeling of loneliness even if the characters aren’t technically alone, the conversations they can’t quite manage to have with each other or with their parents.

Though there aren’t many characters aside from Maddy and Owen that have a lot of screen time in the film, the presence of their parents is felt most heavily.

Maddy’s parents are never seen, but she warns Owen against upsetting her step-father the first time he spends the night and he can be heard arguing, presumably with her mother, upstairs when Maddy is telling Owen about her plans to run away.

Owen’s parents play a bigger role in the film, and his mother, especially, is made out to be a key figure in his life. She’s always warm to him, even when their relationship strains and Owen grows more distant, uncomfortable as he grows up.

The messaging throughout the movie is hard-hitting and powerful, and no-doubt will resonate with queer audiences.

Right from the start, there’s an undertone of Owen feeling out-of-place, for reasons he can’t quite put a finger on: feelings he doesn’t have the language to express. He even says he knows there’s something wrong with him, and his parents can tell, too.

Then he meets Maddy, starts watching “The Pink Opaque”, and is guided by her and the show into femininity and to queerness – it’s comforting and it sometimes feels more real, more enjoyable than real life.

But then harsh reality strikes, and he returns home after sleepovers, goes back downstairs at the end of episodes; back into the real world that he inexplicably feels detached from.

When Maddy offers Owen chances to run away from their town, to leave their lives and identities that aren’t true to them behind, Owen struggles and ultimately doesn’t follow her. It’s an understandable, yet heartbreaking choice: The assumption that the easy route, of ignoring and suppressing who one really is will make it go away, will make it into something that doesn’t have to be dealt with, the hardships and the repercussions of facing it.

And the movie cuts no corners. When Maddy leaves the first time and Owen doesn’t follow, and when Maddy leaves him behind again and never returns, the movie continues; life goes on. Owen grows up, grows old, and it’s put in the audience’s faces that just because ignoring the truth to his identity feels like the easy route at first, as time goes on, the truth doesn’t go away, and life only gets harder.

But the film isn’t entirely bleak: there’s messaging throughout about how “it’s never too late”. 

The writing of the film, done by writer-director Jane Shoenbrun, is incredible. There’s not a moment that isn’t captivating as the story unfolds, and the original music by Alex G. pairs with the coming-of-age, nostalgic feel of the movie well.

Justice Smith, who plays Owen, does incredibly at showing the growth and the inner turmoil Owen faces through the years. Bridgette Lundy-Paine, who portrays Maddy, captivates audiences, especially with long, winding monologues she delivers to Owen about the life she’s lived in the time she’s been away, about the life he could live.

The kinship between the characters for seeing each other and the closeness between them that ebbs and flows can be felt; the love and the heartbreak and the could-have-beens.