Director: Jane Schoenbrun

Stars: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Fred Durst, Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan

Shades of Gregg Araki but with a grainy video aesthetic in writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s impressively mounted 90s-set teen drama.

Owen (Smith) is a seventh grade loner in high school, obsessed with the supernatural ‘Buffy’-style YA TV show ‘The Pink Opaque’ (Cocteau Twins reference ahoy!). In the show, two teens with special powers Isabela (Howard) and Tara (Jordan) commune telepathically in the show’s titular dimension in order to fight a villain of the week, sent to the small town by bad guy nemesis Mr Melancholy.

One day Owen encounters Maddy (Lundy-Paine), a moody ninth grader reading a ‘Pink Opaque’ episode guide. He sheepishly approaches her, and a tentative friendship begins based on their shared identification with the show. Owen begins to go to Maddy’s house to watch new episodes with her and her friend Amanda. Then, due to Owen’s mother’s terminal illness, he is forbidden to go out in the evenings and his father (Fred Durst!) forbids him to stay up after his bedtime curfew to watch a show ‘for girls’.

Luckily, Maddy videos the show for Owen to watch. Later she reveals she is a lesbian, and Owen in turn tells her that he isn’t sure about his sexuality but feels there’s ‘something wrong’. Then Maddy disappears.

This is a woozy, slightly overlong study of nascent queer identity, and how an attachment to youthful cultural artefacts can be instrumental in forming and navigating adolescence. Owen and Maddy find their analogues in Isabela and Tara; one withdrawn, the other spiky and assertive. There is an element of bathos too in showing how a beloved cultural artefact can be elevated way beyond its merits by teen nostalgia.

The barrage of static and glitchy video visuals and sounds, along with the punky soundtrack, are a little wearying over the film’s 100 minute running time, but the leads are excellent, and Schoenbrun’s singular visions will doubtless hit hard with the with its target audience.

‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is out now.

David Willoughby

Follow David on Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm