I Saw the TV Glow is the best horror film I’ve ever seen. Its horror doesn’t come from jump scares, but from something much more unsettling: a reality that feels painfully familiar. It’s the horror of growing up queer in a world that has already decided who you’re supposed to be, of spending every day quietly cutting away parts of yourself just to get by.
Mr. Melancholy, perhaps a stand-in for patriarchy, makes Isabel/Owen and Tara/Maddy drink Luna Juice, causing them to forget who they really are and who they could have been. What follows is a kind of slow suffocation. The film captures this most painfully through its treatment of time, which somehow moves both unbearably slowly and frighteningly fast. Slowly, because every moment spent living as someone you’re not feels almost impossible to endure. Quickly, because when you finally look back, entire years have slipped away, each one resembling the last, none of them ever quite belonging to you.
There’s something devastating about this contradiction. You’re painfully aware of every passing moment, yet somehow lose whole decades of your life. And unlike the monsters in most horror films, there’s nothing you can simply run away from. The thing that’s destroying you has become your everyday life.
Near the end, Owen cuts open his chest and glimpses that blue glow inside him. For a moment, he sees the possibility of another self, someone more beautiful, more powerful, and perhaps finally free. But instead of embracing it, he returns to the world trembling and apologizing to everyone around him.
What breaks my heart is that he’s forgotten that this other self is still alive. He’s spent so long convincing himself that staying where he is, slowly suffocating, was the right decision.
I find that far more terrifying than death. And the worst part is knowing that, somewhere, countless other Owens are living through the same thing.
