I Saw the TV Glow

I Saw the TV Glow can only be described as a hypnotic experience, simultaneously emotive, strange, and disturbing in a way that could only resemble the cinema of David Lynch. The film, starring Justice Smith (Detective Pikachu) and Brigette Lundy-Paine (Atypical), follows two friends bonded over their love for a 90s children's TV show, which awakens them to their own inner truth. Although it starts more as a slow-burning drama, it becomes a spine-chilling, almost nightmarish trance-like experience as the boundaries between the characters' reality and fiction begin to blur. I Saw the TV Glow is, above all, a powerful allegory about growing up as an LGBTQIA+ person, and choosing between being authentic or living a lie to fit into a world that rejects and oppresses those who deviate from heteronormativity. It's one of the best horror films of 2024 so far.