Today on the 5: I've been hearing good things about I Saw The TV Glow for a while now, so when it became avaialble to rent on VOD i jumped on it. As I've come to expect from anything attached to A24, I found it to be a powerful and well made film that's stuck with me since I finished it.
Ozone Nightmare
I Saw The TV Glow Spoiler Free Review
Welcome to you daily five for Monday June 24th, 2024. I have been reading really really great things about a movie from this year called or title I should say I saw the TV glow and it finally became available to rent on digital and so I went over to prime video and rented it. It's one of the $20 rentals which I probably am not going to be able to do a ton of anymore because it is adding up but these are just movies I really want to see and this one in particular I'd seen the trailer for a couple times it looked really interesting. I had read some really fascinating things about it and so I decided all right I'm going to watch this one and having now seen it when I had read about it there were this this was in a lot of ways a movie that felt like it was going to have some aspects that would be beyond my direct ability to comprehend because there is definitely a very very prominent LGBTQ+ aspect to it where this is clearly made. I believe the the person who wrote and directed is trans and so there is a large element of that experience in here so there are movies like The Matrix where you can watch them and not know that there's any type of subtext unless you're really looking for it and there's some people who only ever experience that movie has just a science fiction movie about robots and people who are batteries and then there are movies like this where it becomes very clear at a certain point that oh no this is this has larger things to say so for a while in this movie I thought it was going to be more like The Matrix where it wasn't as obvious that there was a secondary aspect to it because it does function as a pure horror movie. I mean there is a very Philip K. Dick and Lynchian kind of aspect to this where there's this blurring of reality at times where you're not really sure what's real what's not neither of the characters but then at a certain point you realize oh no this is also about something else and I won't spoil any of what it is but there is a very clear line of delineation where the movie becomes less allegorical and becomes more literal that is not a negative in any way I just didn't know for a while whether it was going to be very clear what this movie was talking about and there's a point where yes it is and it functions whether you care about that or not it's still a good horror movie whether you care about the secondary themes or I guess maybe the horror is the secondary theme I don't know I guess that's up further that's up to others to judge so in whatever way you want to look at it I think this is an extraordinarily effective movie and it has a very powerful ending that you can read in at least two different ways one which I don't know I don't know if there is really a happy ending read to this movie no matter which way or maybe there is a third way I saw it as there's really two ways to read it and I'll talk about it on Friday obviously but to me as a viewer myself I can't speak for others I saw the ending as one of two things neither of which I think would be an interpreted that could be interpreted as a happy ending in either case I feel like there's a sadness to the ending one is just more profoundly sad than the other but either way I don't know that you would call this a feel good movie once you get to the ending there's not any type of twist I'll say that it's not one of those type of things not a Shyamalan type of deal it's just that you you have to make some decisions on what you feel like not only the character believes is going on but also you as the viewer believe is going on and depending on how you see it neither one comes out and you go yay everybody's great but one is definitely I think a more profound level of sadness and horror than the other is but no matter what it's a beautiful film it's an A24 and of course you know A24 I've said this many times even if I don't necessarily love the movie I will remember it and in this case I think this is actually a legitimately great movie this is a very powerful very effective very interestingly constructed film I really like the way that it's put together I like the way that there are certain decisions again I want to stay away from spoilers but there's certain storytelling decisions that are made that are very deliberate and I think they work very well I think it it tells you enough that it doesn't feel like you can't figure out what's going on but it also leaves some doors open and you have to decide how you want them to be close and I think that's a really great angle for the movie to take because it does like the characters there's parts where you have to judge what you're seeing and what is real and what isn't and what means what and I think that makes you connect with the characters more because the main character is struggling with this and you as the viewer are as well you just don't know necessarily what is going on you know what the framework is but you don't know what the certainty level is and I think that works in the movie's favor for you as the viewer and also like I said grounds you into the character so again I would recommend it for it's not a scary horror movie it's more of a psychological horror movie but again I saw the TV glow from this year available to rent now, worth seeing whenever you see it later.