Concluding my countdown of last year’s best films…

Best Films of 2024
#1. I Saw the TV Glow

The first time I saw writer/director Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, I wasn’t sure what I thought of it. I knew its story and images had affected me deeply, and that it was one of the most original visions I’d seen in years. But I couldn’t intellectualize my visceral response.

I later learned that Schoenbrun is trans, and they conceived the film as a metaphor for the “egg crack” moment trans people feel when they realize they’re living in the wrong body. And that opened the film up for me in a whole new way.

Many people, from all over the gender spectrum, say the film’s theme is achingly obvious. But I’m not ashamed to say this straight cis white boy needed a little handholding to grasp it.

What I did grasp, on both the first watch and every subsequent one, is that Schoenbrun is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today — a provocative storyteller, a master of tone, and a visual genius.

I Saw the TV Glow is about a pair of alienated teens who bond over a sci-fi TV show called The Pink Opaque (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Nick at Nite teen horror shows). Trapped in the suburbs with oppressive home lives and few friends, they find an escape in the show’s elaborate mythology.

The teens, Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Jack Haven), talk about running away — disappearing into their own surreal adventure — but only Maddy follows through. Owen is too afraid to leave his cocooned existence. When they eventually reunite, she insists she has discovered a new reality.

The trans metaphor is evident, with Maddy representing somebody who has transitioned and Owen somebody afraid to take that step. But one of the great things about the film is how well it works as a metaphor for any sort of repression, and how well it explores the role of media in the lives of adolescents.

My own obsession with Buffy, Lost, and other shows came later in life, but I was reminded by this movie of my childhood infatuation with video games and the early internet. The glow of those TV screens transported and entertained me, but — like social media for today’s kids — also kept me from engaging in the real world.

I Saw the TV Glow is thematically rich and artfully crafted, but that’s not what earned it the #1 slot on this list. The X factor for this film was its incredible staying power. I haven’t stopped thinking about this movie since I saw it.

And more than that, it truly opened my mind and helped me understand a perspective completely different from my own. I’m a strong supporter of trans rights, somebody who believes the Republican effort to control and erase them is evil. But I can’t say I’ve ever really wrapped my head around what it means to be born in the wrong body.

This movie changed that. The depiction of Owen’s suffocating existence made me grasp, for the first time, the pain, uncertainty, and fear a trans person must experience when they realize they’re trapped, and when they understand that escaping will involve a whole other kind of horror.