Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Somewhere between a coming-of-age story and a waking nightmare sits I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun's 2024 drama-horror that uses an obsession with a fictional TV show to unravel something much stranger about its two teenage leads.
What is I Saw the TV Glow about?
Owen is a quiet teenager drifting through suburban life when a classmate, Maddy, introduces him to a late-night television show unlike anything he's seen - a series that seems to hint at a hidden, supernatural world running just beneath their own. The show becomes an obsession for both of them, a shared secret that gives their otherwise uneventful lives a sense of meaning. As years pass and the show itself fades from the air, Owen can't shake the feeling that its version of reality was somehow closer to the truth than the one he's actually living in, and the glow of the television starts to bleed into everything around him.
Cast & crew
Justice Smith carries the film as Owen, opposite Brigette Lundy-Paine as Maddy, the classmate who pulls him into the show's orbit. Ian Foreman plays a younger version of Owen, while Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Danielle Deadwyler, Fred Durst, and Conner O'Malley appear in supporting roles across the film's shifting timeline.
Context & significance
Jane Schoenbrun built I Saw the TV Glow around the specific texture of 1990s late-night television and the kind of show that only a handful of viewers seem to remember, using that nostalgia to explore identity and disconnection rather than straightforward scares. The film sits closer to psychological drama than conventional horror, even as it borrows horror's mood and imagery.
Where & how to watch
K-Time streams I Saw the TV Glow with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so it can be watched either way. The film's page is open to read without an account; watching it requires logging into K-Time, a platform built around a Farsi-first experience for Persian-speaking viewers wherever they live.