I Saw the TV GlowMovies like I Saw the TV Glow
- Key Features:
- Supernatural, Teenage angst, Reality vs. perception, Mystery, Television, Suburban life, Coming-of-age, Friendship, Visions, Existential crisis, Paranoia, Identity, Surrealism
- Tone:
- serious, stylized, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Indie film enthusiasts, Psychological thriller aficionados, Viewers interested in surreal narratives
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Dread
I Saw the TV Glow

Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate Maddy introduces him to a mysterious TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.
I Saw the TV Glow
Reality and fantasy begin to blur when a teenager, alone in her attic bedroom, immerses herself in a role-playing horror game online.

Two quirky, cynical teenaged girls try to figure out what to do with their lives after high school graduation. After they play a prank on an eccentric, middle aged record collector, one of them befriends him, which causes a rift in the girls’ friendship.

Ten years after an apocalyptic event left the world haunted by ghosts, Roni receives a threatening message from beyond the grave. Joining forces with a mysterious classmate, Kirk, Roni descends into a shadow world that blurs the bounds of the living and the dead-and begins a desperate race against time to stop a cunning killer.

A teenager finds her perfect life upended when she's stalked by a mysterious doppelganger who has her eyes set on assuming her identity.

A 17-year-old boy buys mini-cameras and displays the footage online at I-see-you.com. The cash rolls in as the site becomes a major hit. Everyone seems to have fun until it all comes crashing down....

A teenage skateboarder becomes suspected of being connected with a security guard who suffered a brutal death in a skate park called "Paranoid Park".

A psychology student who experienced night terrors as a child must face the chilling realization that her nightmares were not all in her head.

Shy teenager Megan moves to a new town with her widowed mother and quickly becomes the most unpopular girl in high school. But when she starts to communicate with a mysterious mirror, her tormentors begin to meet with a horrifying series of 'accidents'. Is the mirror a reflection of Megan's own inner demons... or has she unwittingly opened the doorway of the damned?

In a futuristic dystopia with enforced beauty standards, a teen awaiting mandatory cosmetic surgery embarks on a journey to find her missing friend.

No one seemed to care about Jamie Marks until after his death. Hoping to find the love and friendship he never had in life, Jamie’s ghost visits former classmate Adam McCormick, drawing him into the bleak world between the living and the dead.

A suburban teen girl and her little brother must stop a terrifying internet meme brought to life by the hysteria of their parents.

Suspecting that people are transforming into malevolent shape-shifters, Wyatt flees to New York City to seek out his estranged childhood friend Christian.

An insurance salesman begins to suspect that his whole life is actually some sort of reality TV show.

A teenager who went missing and was presumed dead returns home after eight years to find a family deeply affected by his disappearance. Gradually, doubts arise about whether he really is the missing boy or an impostor.

In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.

After an attack leaves him in limbo -- invisible to the living and also near death -- a teenager discovers the only person who might be able help him is his attacker.

After a massive party one evening, 17-year-old Tina begins experiencing nightmares in which she is haunted by an unusual creature.

15-year-old Mia faces an overwhelming transformation which puts her entire existence into question. Her body is changing radically, and despite desperate attempts to halt the process, Mia is soon forced to accept that nature is far more powerful than she is.

An 18th birthday mushroom trip brings free-spirited Elliott face-to-face with her wisecracking 39-year-old self. But when Elliott’s "old ass" starts handing out warnings about what her younger self should and shouldn't do, Elliott realizes she has to rethink everything about family, love, and what's becoming a transformative summer.

In a small town in Massachusetts, four high school girls perform a ritual in an attempt to debunk the lore of Slender Man. When one of the girls goes mysteriously missing, they begin to suspect that she is, in fact, his latest victim.

After surviving a car accident that took the life of her boyfriend, a teenage girl believes he's attempting to reconnect with her from the after world.

When some very creepy things start happening around school, the kids at Herrington High make the chilling discovery that confirms their worst suspicions: their teachers really are from another planet!

When teenage Molly Hartley moves to a new town, she's haunted by terrifying visions that may have to do with dark secrets from her past. Something evil lurks just beneath the lush surfaces of her private-school world, and it holds the rights to her very soul. On the eve of her 18th birthday, Molly is about to discover the truth of just who or what she is destined to become.

A creative and driven teenager is desperate to escape his hometown and the haunting memories of his turbulent childhood.

Like any other teenage girl, Tara is just surviving high school — yet her father and mother seem strangely distant. Amidst a nearby spree of gruesome ax murders, Tara has sightings of terrifying entities, forcing her to question her own sanity and shocking ancestry.

High school senior Alex has an encounter with mysterious lights that appear over her small town. She soon develops dangerous, supernatural abilities, and turns to her childhood friend Sean. The authorities target them and a chase ensues as officials try to discover the truth behind Alex's transformation.

Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.

A new girl in a quiet town, Tess tries to manage her psychosis while adjusting to her new life with her mom. After stumbling upon the shrine of Lucy, a hit and run victim, Tess finds herself overwhelmed by hallucinations of the dead girl and starts to question her sanity again. When the spirit possesses Tess’s mind and soul, mother and daughter are at a loss for where to turn next for salvation: religion or medicine? Both institutions have failed them to date but faith leads them to the house of Sarah, Lucy’s mother, who has been despondent since the accident. All together with time working against them, Sarah is desperate to believe that Lucy is still alive in Tess but neither parent wants to give up on their daughter. Now that she understands what is happening to her, ultimately Tess must decide whether she wants to keep fighting or succumb to her affliction.

Forced to move to a boring backwater town, a teenager embarks on affairs with a teacher and a stoner classmate.

An introverted teen sparks with his new neighbor, and together the couple begins to explore the haunted house that his family has unknowingly just purchased.

A timid and socially alienated 17-year-old high school student's life is turned upside down when she switches places with her sinister mirror image.

When a depressed woman is burglarized, she finds a new sense of purpose by tracking down the thieves alongside her obnoxious neighbor. But they soon find themselves dangerously out of their depth against a pack of degenerate criminals.

Sophia, a new high school student, tries to make friends with Barbara, who tells her that “she kills giants,” protecting this way her hometown and its inhabitants, who do not understand her strange behavior.

When a 10-year-old boy goes missing, lead investigator Greg Harper struggles to balance the pressure of the investigation and troubles with his wife, Jackie. Facing a recent affair, great strain is put on the family that slowly gnaws away at Jackie's grip on reality. But after a malicious presence manifests itself in their home and puts their son, Connor, in mortal danger, the cold, hard truth about evil in the Harper household is finally uncovered.

Samantha Kingston has everything. Then, everything changes. After one fateful night, she wakes up with no future at all. Trapped into reliving the same day over and over, she begins to question just how perfect her life really was.

A group of suburban teenagers try to support each other through the difficult task of becoming adults.

A coming-of-age movie that tells a story unfolding in every high school around the country -- a story of kids hiding their true identities in plain sight, even as they feverishly pursue their hearts' desires.

Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia.

After discovering a disturbing video from a night she doesn’t remember, sixteen-year-old Mandy must try to figure out what happened and how to navigate the escalating fallout.

A case of mistaken identity results in unexpected romance when the most popular girl in high school and the biggest loser must come together to win over their crushes.

An awkward, telekinetic teenage girl's lonely life is dominated by relentless bullying at school and an oppressive religious fanatic mother at home. When her tormentors pull a humiliating prank at the senior prom, she unleashes a horrifying chaos on everyone, leaving nothing but destruction in her wake.

When troubled teen Milo, who has a fascination with vampire lore, meets the equally alienated Sophie, the two form a bond that begins to blur Milo's fantasy into reality.

A teenage girl living with schizophrenia begins to suspect her neighbor has kidnapped a child. Her parents try desperately to help her live a normal life, without exposing their own tragic secrets, and the only person who believes her is Caleb – a boy she isn’t even sure exists.

A teenager stops off to see his dealer to test a new drug before heading off for a night of partying. On the way home, he picks up an injured woman, and the night takes a surreal turn.

A suburban family is torn apart when fourteen-year-old Annie meets her first boyfriend online. After months of communicating via online chat and phone, Annie discovers her friend is not who he originally claimed to be. Shocked into disbelief, her parents are shattered by their daughter's actions and struggle to support her as she comes to terms with what has happened to her once innocent life.

Campers at an LGBTQ+ conversion camp endure unsettling psychological techniques while the campsite is stalked by a mysterious killer.

A socially awkward woman with a fondness for arts and crafts, horses, and supernatural crime shows finds her increasingly lucid dreams trickling into her waking life.

Two high school filmmakers decide to create the illusion of a haunting on an unsuspecting neighbor.

Oona, a recent graduate in anthropology, has returned to her dead mother’s seaside cottage in southern England to prepare it for sale. Her arrival disturbs Mani, a wary vagrant who has been squatting on the property.

Five young people apply to live in an isolated house together for six months whilst their every move is filmed by numerous cameras.

Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.

A disconnected teenage girl enters a relationship with a man twice her age. She sees him as the solution to all her problems, but his intentions are not what they seem.

Alex, an intersexed 15-year-old, is living as a girl, but she and her family begin to wonder whether she's emotionally a boy when another teenager's sexual advances bring the issue to a head. As Alex faces a final decision regarding her gender, she meets both hostility and compassion.

Under small-town scrutiny, a withdrawn farmer’s daughter forges an intimate friendship with a worldly but reckless new girl in 1960s Oklahoma.

After Darby Harper suffered a near-death experience as a child, she gained the ability to see ghosts. To combat the existential boredom of high school, she runs a side business counseling local spirits in her spare time. When an unexpected occurrence happens between Darby and Capri, the most popular girl at her high school, Darby reluctantly agrees to help her and in the process learns how to fit in with the living world again.

A mother of two inherits a home from her aunt. On the first night in the new home she is confronted with murderous intruders and fights for her daughters’ lives. Sixteen years later the daughters reunite at the house, and that is when things get strange...

Bill Whitney is worried that he is different to his sister and parents. They mix with other upper-class people while Bill is more down to earth. Even his girlfriend seems a bit odd. All is revealed when Bill returns home to find a party in full swing.

Teenage friends Kit and Libby make prank phone calls for fun but then find themselves involved in a brutal double murder committed by one of their targets.

While producing a reality TV show, a teenager meets a magician whose powers are real but put him in danger.

An impulsive musician struggling with schizophrenia falls for a mysterious woman who may be all in his head. When she suddenly vanishes, he takes off on a cross- country journey across Australia to find her, forcing his long-suffering brother to try to rescue him.

Three friends making a web series about their town discover that their neighbors are being killed and replaced by creatures who are perfect copies of their victims.

Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach works dead-end jobs to support his sister and her son. Questioning his life, he paints, surfs and hangs out with his best friend, Gabe. When Gabe's older brother returns home for the summer, Zach suddenly finds himself drawn into a relationship he didn't expect.

It's the summer before 6th grade, and Clark is the new-in-town biracial kid in a sea of white. Discovering that to be cool he needs to act 'more black,' he fumbles to meet expectations, while his urban intellectual parents Mack and Gina also strive to adjust to small-town living. Equipped for the many inherent challenges of New York, the tight-knit family are ill prepared for the drastically different set of obstacles that their new community presents, and soon find themselves struggling to understand themselves and each other in this new suburban context.

A same-sex couple move to a small town so they can enjoy a better quality of life and raise their 16 year-old daughter with the best social values. But nothing is as it seems in their picturesque neighbourhood. And when Malik sees the folks next door throwing a very strange party, something very shocking has got to give.

When a mysterious cyber-attack cripples civilization, a group of old college friends and lovers retreat to a remote country cabin, where they must cope with an uncertain future while navigating the minefield of their shared past.

Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.

After arguing with his girlfriend, Ali, Tyler lands in the arms of sexy new girl, Holly. The next morning, he finds that not only does Ali agree to take him back, but Holly is a new student at their school and is dead set on her new man.

In a small supermarket in a blue collar town, a black man smiles at a 10 year old white boy across the checkout aisle. This innocuous moment sends two gangs into a ruthless war that ends with a shocking backlash.

School captain Ellie is seriously crushing on her rebellious classmate Abbie. Determined to ask her first love to the year 12 formal, Ellie devises a plan to go public with the invitation but before she can go through with it, her dead aunt Tara reappears from beyond the grave. Believing she's been brought back from the dead to be Ellie's fairy godmother, Tara dishes out unwanted dating advice based on her life as an out lesbian in the '80s.

A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.

Teenagers Zach and Josh have been best friends their whole lives, but when a gruesome accident leads to a cover-up, the secret drives a wedge between them and propels them down a rabbit hole of escalating paranoia and violence.

Tyler is a young man who is desperately seeking direction from a world that seems to have abandoned him. Searching for answers he looks to his new friend Indrid who appears to have it all figured out.

Still reeling from the tragic death of their mother, a teenage girl and her younger sister find themselves plagued by a sadistic presence in their house and struggle to get their grieving father to pay attention before it’s too late.

When Jonas was 14 he met the charismatic but mysterious Nathan. In addition to guiding him in grappling with his sexuality, Jonas soon confronts something dark and even dangerous about his new friend. Now an attractive, sexually assured adult, memories from this time still haunt Jonas.

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge, he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Quentin arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Quentin soon learns that there are clues, and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer Quentin gets, the less he sees of the girl he thought he knew.

After the traumatic loss of her mother, a teenaged girl tries to uncover the dark secrets behind her new home, in spite of her father's disbelief.

A troubled young woman wakes up one day as a different person - someone who is stalked by creatures.

Kimberly, a teenager suffering from agoraphobia, has not left the house since her mother's unsolved murder. On the eve of Thanksgiving, she begins to suspect that the safe harbor of home and her doting father may be a dangerous mirage.

Shy, straight-A student Ellie is hired by sweet but inarticulate jock Paul, who needs help wooing the most popular girl in school. But their new and unlikely friendship gets tricky when Ellie discovers she has feelings for the same girl.

Socially inept 17-year-old cinephile Lawrence Kweller gets a job at a video store, where he forms a complicated friendship with his older female manager.

A group of American teens comes to Ireland to visit a friend who takes them on a camping trip in search of the local, fabled magic mushrooms. When the psychedelics start taking hold, the panicked friends are attacked by ghostly creatures; but how can they determine whether what they are experiencing is reality or hallucination?

A troubled college freshman resurrects his imaginary friend to help him cope with a violent trauma.

Withdrawn and sensitive teenager Carrie White faces bullying from classmates and abuse from her fanatically pious mother. When she begins to suspect that she has supernatural powers, things take a dark and violent turn.

Rose, a desperate mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment. After a violent car crash, Sharon disappears and Rose begins a desperate search to get her back. She descends into the center of the twisted reality of a town's terrible secret. Pursued by grotesquely deformed creatures and townspeople stuck in permanent purgatory, Rose begins to uncover the truth behind the apocalyptic disaster that burned the town 30 years earlier.

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

A teen girl disappears after trying to meet men online in order to escape her small town. Apparently, only her best friend worries enough to investigate the mystery.

Agnes feels stuck. Unlike her best friend, Lydie, who’s moved to New York and is now expecting a baby, Agnes still lives in the New England house they once shared as graduate students, now working as a professor at her alma mater. A ‘bad thing’ happened to Agnes a few years ago and, since then, despite her best efforts, life hasn’t gotten back on track.

When high school misfits Rickie and JT decide to ditch school and find themselves lost in the crumbling facility of a nearby abandoned hospital, they come face-to-face with a gruesome discovery: a body of a woman stripped naked, chained to a table and covered in plastic and soon realize she is anything but dead. Quickly the boys find themselves embarking on a twisted yet poignant journey testing the limits of their friendship, and forces both to decide just how far they're willing to stretch their understanding of right and wrong.

Looking for an escape from her recurring nightmares, 18-year-old Sarah submits to a university sleep study, but soon realizes she's become the conduit to a frightening new discovery.

As the president of a trashy TV channel, Max Renn is desperate for new programming to attract viewers. When he happens upon "Videodrome," a TV show dedicated to gratuitous torture and punishment, Max sees a potential hit and broadcasts the show on his channel. However, after his girlfriend auditions for the show and never returns, Max investigates the truth behind Videodrome and discovers that the graphic violence may not be as fake as he thought.

Geeky teenager David and his popular twin sister, Jennifer, get sucked into the black-and-white world of a 1950s TV sitcom called "Pleasantville," and find a world where everything is peachy keen all the time. But when Jennifer's modern attitude disrupts Pleasantville's peaceful but boring routine, she literally brings color into its life.

At thirteen-years-old, with an unusually high IQ and a knack for observing things about other people, Lou Bertignac is not only the youngest in her class at school; she is also the most unusual. Painfully shy, she has few friends, save for Lucas, whose company helps her get through each day. At home, Lou's life is also difficult: Her mother hasn't left the house in years and her father spends his days crying in the bathroom. Lou's world is dark and sad... That is, until she meets No.

A high school student is haunted by thoughts of "The Matrix" and a person named "Neo".

Amy is ravaged by the notion that she is going to die tomorrow, which sends her down a dizzying emotional spiral. When her skeptical friend Jane discovers Amy’s feeling of imminent death to be contagious, they both begin bizarre journeys through what might be the last day of their lives.

All alone, Yellow Guy tries to stop a lamp from teaching him about dreams. While Red Guy finds out the truth about the puppets' existence.

A socially awkward teenager is blindsided when her mother introduces her to her new fiancée. At first, his charm, intelligence, and beauty seem too good to be true, and after a series of strange occurrences, the teenage daughter realizes that this new member of their family is not exactly who he seems.

Based on the Vanity Fair article of the same title, a story about a young boy drawn into a web of lies through an online chatroom.

Years into a benevolent alien occupation, mankind is still adjusting to its new overlords. Their technology initially held promise for global prosperity, but rendered most human jobs – and steady income – obsolete. When two teenagers discover the aliens are fascinated with human love and will pay for access to it, they decide to livestream their romance to make extra cash for their families.

An ex-cop and his family are the target of an evil force that is using mirrors as a gateway into their home.
