We’re All Going to the World’s Fair was one of the more promising (and eerie) debut films in recent memory. Now, director Jane Schoenbrun is returning with their follow-up, I Saw the TV Glow.
The Emma Stone-produced A24 film stars Justice Smith (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) as Owen, a teenager who is “just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own,” according to the official plot synopsis. “In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.” The cast also includes Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Fred Durst (!), and Danielle Deadwyler.
You can watch the trailer above.
Schoenbrun told the Hollywood Reporter that I Saw the TV Glow was inspired by their love of television. “It’s a very strange phenomenon that I don’t think people take seriously, but certainly as a dissociated queer kid in the suburbs, many of my closest emotional relationships were with characters on Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” they said. Amber Benson, who played Tara on Buffy, even makes a cameo.
I Saw the TV Glow, which I will never not want to call I Saw the TV Warming Glow, opens in theaters on May 3rd.