I Saw the TV Glow's director might be a genius. That doesn't mean the movie is

"It feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all my insides. I know there's nothing there, but I'm still too nervous to open myself up to check," says Owen, one of the many lost characters in Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow. "I know there's something wrong with me — my parents know it too, even if they don't say anything."

It is a good speech, a great speech even, by a writer-director who's already proved their mastery over the revealing dialogue of adolescence in We're All Going to the World's Fair. Here, that mastery continues: made with intention, Schoenbrun's vision is topped only by obviously deliberate execution in a visually stunning, confidently subtle allegory for the constantly evolving horrors of growing up in a modern hellscape. 

But simply knowing what you want to say, and having the talent to say it exactingly, doesn't mean it's enjoyable to hear. Because it's no accident that I Saw the TV Glow is a difficult, hinted at thing; its message lives somewhere between the everyday struggles of lonely adolescents and the overwhelming feeling of destroying oneself to survive growing up transgender.

But in action, it's a nearly inscrutable metaphor hidden beneath miles of 90s pop-art symbolism. It both asks too much of its audience while offering too few rewards for the effort. 

The surface story follows Owen — at the beginning, a timid seventh grader dragged along to election night at the local high school, and initially played by Let the Right One In's series star Ian Foreman.  

Awash in the blue filter that both telegraphs our overall mood and the 90s nostalgia seemingly pumped into the set's air vents, Owen quietly wanders past pastel-coloured lockers and the Keith Haring inspired-Fruitopia vending machines that more or less defined the decade. Along with the religiously lit CRT-TVs and glow pens, they're part of the many props trying to send us back in time with a series of unending bonks on the head.

Owen soon stumbles on Maddy, a ninth grader juggling the dual responsibilities of avoiding volunteer duties and doing her best Ghost World impression. But after a brief jab at Owen's youth causes him to crumple into himself — for the first of many, many times — Maddy softens. 

Prying into what turns out to be a strict, sheltered childhood with a bedtime so early he can't watch the coolest show on TV, she becomes even nicer. Owen is invited over to a secret sleepover in Maddy's basement so they can stay up to watch The Pink Opaque together, painted in the same staticky light as scattered shouting and implied violence echoes upstairs to sketch a picture of Maddy's own problems. 

As they grow (and the Owen role is taken over by Justice Smith) their friendship unfolds in tandem with the events of Pink Opaque, a show about two telepathically-linked teenage girls at summer camp.

Another aping of 90s content that, while accurate in broad strokes, is too much a celebration of the style to feel genuine. The too-good and too-modern-to-be-true X-Files Jr. feels more like Adventure Time through a rose-coloured screen than actual memory, and perhaps the sole point where a hiccup in Schoenbrun's direction makes it difficult to stay immersed in their world.

But it's enough to hook Owen, hunching over glowing screens to devour Pink Opaque tapes Maddy gives him.

The rest of I Saw The TV Glow jumps up the surrealism by dipping in and out of that TV world until the realities are mixed. What follows is an untangling of those characters' threads that plumbs the depths of a mystery that viewers can either go into blind, or do some major homework to unpack. 

Granted, there are hints throughout. Owen, a Black boy with a white father in a suburbia seemingly devoid of diversity, is closed off from the outside world in virtually every way. He answers the question of whether he likes girls or boys with "I think I like TV shows." His pivotal moment is an eruptive, guttural scream that he spends the next several minutes apologizing for. 

Aside from his late-addition voice overs and storybook-style narration that clears up some of the plot while damaging its overall quality (an explanatory crutch in Schoenbrun's work that goes all the way back to their pseudo-documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination) Owen stays tight-lipped around nearly everyone.