At the beginning of I Saw the TV Glow, it’s 1996 in suburbia, and a very young Owen (Ian Foreman, played by Justice Smith as a teen/adult) has just met the most interesting person he’s ever met — Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who’s slightly older than him, and obsessed with a TV show called The Pink Opaque. While the show technically airs past Owen’s bedtime, he manages to watch it with Maddy after lying to his parents about a sleepover, and becomes almost as invested in the supernatural story as her.

A few years later, Maddy vanishes without a trace, The Pink Opaque is canceled, and Owen’s mother passes away. More time passes, with Owen remaining at home with his father (Fred Durst), living a quiet life. As Owen gets older, though, memories of his time with Maddy threaten to expose the secrets he’s kept hidden, even from himself.

The scope of Jane Schoenbrun’s new feature film is both a lot bigger and a lot smaller than the above synopsis implies. I Saw the TV Glow is a mystery where the answers are inside the main character, they just don’t know where to look — a movie that’s a bit hard to unlock on first viewing. Yet once the full scope of the story becomes clear, its themes have a powerful impact on the viewer.

In many ways, the movie makes for a fascinating companion piece to Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker, another spring release from a trans filmmaker: What both projects have in common is the way in which they explore how pop culture gave them tools for a deeper understanding of themselves.

For most ’90s kids, the brilliance of I Saw the TV Glow can be narrowed down to a font choice, because The Pink Opaque uses Herculanum for its on-screen credits — the font Buffy the Vampire Slayer used for its seven-season run. The Pink Opaque isn’t a direct parody (or even recreation) of Buffy on a few different levels — there’s a lot of ’90s Nickelodeon programming in the mix there, too. But the font choice removes any uncertainty about at least one of Schoenbrun’s points of inspiration, something they have been open about — even noting that a key cameo in the film was them offering a “corrective” for one of that show’s most controversial choices.

I Saw the TV Glow (A24)

In something as thematically dense as I Saw the TV Glow, the clarity of the Buffy connection is a helpful touchstone in terms of understanding the film’s full complexity. Capturing the essence of fandom is something not a lot of TV shows and films have excelled at in the past, despite the fact that so much of fandom is rooted in these properties. That’s where the brilliance of TV Glow lies, because it understands one of the major reasons why someone might fall obsessively in love with a TV show — it represents something that the person in question is craving in their real life: romance, adventure, intrigue, escape.

What we consume may define us. But by that understanding, what we consume isn’t a thoughtless choice. Sometimes, it’s a reflection of subconscious desires, things about ourselves that we’re not ready to say out loud.

Central to the film’s success is Justice Smith — as a fan of his going back to Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down, it’s wonderful to see him take on a role with the complexity Owen demands. It’s downright fearless work, as Smith exposes Owen’s vulnerabilities while also showing us how he hides them. Brigette Lundy-Paine meanwhile brings a powerful determination to Maddy, even in her shakiest moments; a powerful tribute to any queer kid who knew that key to their surviving their bigoted hometown was escaping it.

Fred Durst’s involvement in the film is less of a performance and more of a shadowy presence, but he brings an ominous energy to his scenes, which only enhances the overall unsettling tone: One of the genres assigned to this film is horror, and there are some bone-chilling moments. However, they don’t reveal themselves in the way you expect. The real horrors presented by the film are all internal, about what can happen to a person if they repress too much of themselves over time. There are ghosts, but they’re the ghosts of potential happiness and fulfillment. And those ghosts haunt us like none other.

I Saw the TV Glow is currently playing in limited release, and goes wide beginning Friday, May 17th. Check out the trailer below.