How I Saw the TV Glow Is a Hidden Sequel to a Famous Slenderman Documentary (2024)

A24 has added to its litany of mind-bending, psychological horror films with director Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow. Schoenbrun is a filmmaker who has been committed to exploring society's relationship with media, especially when taken to the extreme. In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, they discuss this. "We find ways to insulate ourselves from reality, to live lives dependent on fictions – personal fictions, historical fictions, societal fictions, religious fictions," Schoenbrun explains. "This is a coping mechanism I think, and... There’s a sadness and a darkness to this. But does that render life a tragedy? A horror movie?"

In the case of I Saw the TV Glow, it's a little bit of both. For instance, a motif that emerges in this and others of Schoenbrun's projects is the concept of tulpas. A tulpa is a Buddhist mystical concept whereby an imaginary entity becomes real if enough people validate its existence and power. This concept lends itself to the horror genre because if the tulpa is a monster – or even if it isn't, but it still leads the believer to do something dangerous – it's not something we want to make manifest.

The tulpa in I Saw the TV Glow is, of course, The Pink Opaque, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-inspired TV series which Owen and Maddy use as a source of escapism until Maddy becomes unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. In Schoenbrun's documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination, the tulpa is Slenderman, 2009's own faceless boogeyman.

A Self-Induced Hallucination Examines the Real-Life Slenderman Stabbing

On May 31, 2014, two 12-year-olds brought their friend to a wooded area and attempted to kill her as a sacrifice to the fictional figure Slenderman. This (and the entire Slenderman phenomenon) is the subject of Jane Schoenbrun's found footage documentary, A Self-Induced Hallucination. Slenderman was a tall, lanky, faceless, tentacled creature with origins in the creepypasta community. This community was dedicated to sharing short stories meant to scare, shock, or unnerve the reader. In the early days of the internet, many urban legends were born or popularized here. Slenderman, in particular, really took off – so much so that he may as well have been real to the young storytellers and believers.

One way the film illustrates this is with the "Slenderman sickness," a series of symptoms such as nosebleeds and nausea meant to indicate Slenderman wanted you to be his next proxy. Videos and posts were uploaded by members of the community whenever one got a nosebleed as "proof" of the creature's existence. After the real-world crime took place, references to that, too, were made to bolster the "argument." Naturally, this was seen as in poor taste, which caused many to distance themselves from the tragedy and the community at large. Jane Schoenbrun noted,

"My goal here is not to pay tribute to the archive of videos that I’ve pulled from. Rather, I want to use these videos... to interrogate bigger questions that arise when considered collectively. I have no interest in casting blame in any one direction, or arguing that the tragic incident at the heart of this film serves as evidence that the internet or YouTube or video games should be legislated. People have been carrying out atrocities in the name of fictional texts for a lot longer than YouTube has been around."

Delusion Also Becomes Dangerous in I Saw the TV Glow

I Saw the TV Glow

PG-13

4/5

Release Date

May 3, 2024

Director

Jane Schoenbrun

Cast

Justice Smith , Brigette Lundy-Paine , Danielle Deadwyler , Fred Durst , Helena Howard , Ian Foreman

Main Genre

Horror

Read Our Review

One such question that Schoenbrun interrogates is the role that mental illness plays in leading a person to be so intensely preoccupied with a tulpa. The girls guilty of the Slenderman stabbing ended up being diagnosed with schizophrenia. Maddy, played by Brigette Lundy-Paine in a standout performance, is a queer teenager neglected by her parents and rejected by her peers save for Owen (Justice Smith). She becomes increasingly isolated and eventually monomaniacally obsessed with The Pink Opaque, a TV series she finds representation in.

This doesn't become a problem until she becomes divorced from reality and starts asking Owen to do reckless and dangerous things with her in the name of the show. Whereas Owen was once inspired by her courage to live out loud, and was even tempted to eschew their suburban life for a chance at a rebirth together, he ultimately decides to ghost her. His character is a lot more risk-averse in general, but he also picks up on some concerning changes in his friend.

I Saw the TV Glow is a quiet, philosophical horror-thriller that explores how and why fans of media blur the lines between fantasy and reality. The through-line of escapism via tulpas and the depictions of mental illness make a strong case for it being a sequel (whether intentional or not) to A Self-Induced Hallucination. A Self-Induced Hallucination was uploaded by Jane Schoenbrun to Vimeo but has since been removed. I Saw the TV Glow is out now only in theaters.