I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

In 1996, isolated teenagers Owen and Maddy bond over the young adult television show The Pink Opaque, which follows teenagers Isabel and Tara as they use their psychic connection to fight supervillain Mr. Melancholy, who has the power to warp time and reality. Due to the show airing past his bedtime and his father's disapproval of him watching it, Owen sneaks out to Maddy's house to watch it with her; she also provides him with tapes of the show when he misses it. Maddy feels deeply connected to The Pink Opaque, claiming that it feels more real to her than her actual life. Two years later, while watching The Pink Opaque with Owen, Maddy begins sobbing inexplicably, later explaining that she has resolved to run away. She expects Owen to join her, but he finds himself unable to go through with it and stays behind. Later, Maddy goes missing, Owen's mother Brenda dies of cancer, and The Pink Opaque is canceled after five seasons.

In 2006, Owen still lives with his father, Frank, and works at a local movie theater. Maddy suddenly reappears one night and takes Owen to a bar where it's "safe" for them to talk. She rebuffs Owen's pleas for her to contact the police, instead questioning what Owen remembers of The Pink Opaque and claiming to have spent the past two years inside the show itself. At her urging, Owen rewatches the final episode, in which Mr. Melancholy captures Isabel and Tara and imprisons their consciousnesses in a pocket universe known as the "Midnight Realm" which bears a strong resemblance to the real world. Mr. Melancholy's minions then bury Isabel and Tara alive before the episode abruptly ends. After finishing the episode, Owen suffers a nervous breakdown and attempts to stick his head through the TV screen before Frank pulls him out.

The next night, Maddy explains to Owen that, after running away, she continued to feel unsatisfied and paid a man to bury her alive; after suffocating, she awoke in The Pink Opaque as Tara. She explains that they are in fact in the Midnight Realm and that their true identities are those of Tara and Isabel, respectively; the memories of their actual lives have manifested as episodes of a TV show. Maddy then encourages Owen to allow her to bury him alive so that they may return to their reality. She leads Owen to a football field to be buried, but at the last minute, he panics, pushes her away, and rushes home. While Owen never sees her again, he remains haunted by her claims.

By 2010, Owen is living alone after Frank's death from a stroke, though he claims to have started his own family. One night, he rewatches The Pink Opaque on a streaming service, but finds it to be more fatuous, saccharine, and juvenile than he remembered. Over the next twenty years, Owen's depression and asthma increasingly worsen. After the movie theater he works for closes down, his supervisor secures him a job at a family entertainment center.

During a child's birthday party, a now middle-aged Owen begins abruptly screaming that he is "dying" and begs for help, though nobody reacts, appearing instead to freeze in place as Owen cries out. Owen locks himself in the bathroom and cuts his chest open with a box cutter, smiling when he sees a TV screen inside. He returns to work and timidly offers apologies to partygoers for his outburst.