‘I Saw the TV Glow’ Trailer: Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine’s Reality Blurs in Enthralling Preview

After stellar reviews following its Sundance premiere, A24 has released the trailer for Jane Schoenbrun’s new horror film, I Saw the TV Glow.

Justice Smith stars as Owen, who strikes up a friendship with older classmate Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine). Maddy gets him hooked on a TV show called The Pink Opaque, which, according to Owen’s new friend, is about teen girls Tara (Lindsay Jordan) and Isabela (Helena Howard), who share a psychic connection and “help each other fight a new monster from across the county.”

More from The Hollywood Reporter

• Phoebe Bridgers Calls Out Ex-Grammys CEO Neil Portnow Following Boygenius Win: "Rot in Piss"

• 'Chicken Shop Date' Host Amelia Dimoldenberg to Hit Oscars Red Carpet as Social Media Ambassador

• Paul Rudd Plays a Bumbling Mailman in a Fan's Music Video After Meeting Them During Taylor Swift's Eras Tour Stop

While the show offers them escapism from their tumultuous adolescent lives, they soon realize that the universe from The Pink Opaque is beginning to blur with reality. Owen tries to ignore this at first, telling Maddy it’s just “a TV show,” but is forced to confront the blended worlds when Maddy disappears and the series gets canceled.

Schoenbrun cast various musicians for their follow-up to We’re All Going to The World’s Fair, including Fred Durst as Owen’s father, Frank. The trailer gives a peek at Jordan, who performs under the moniker Snail Mail, making her feature film debut as Tara, one-half of the Pink Opaque duo, and contributes an original song for the film’s soundtrack. Phoebe Bridgers also makes a brief cameo in the preview, performing alongside the Haley Dahl-fronted band Sloppy Jane. The Grammy-winning singer will also have an original track in collaboration with Sloppy Jane featured in the film.

“We are all ourselves, and we’re also conditioned by the invisible signals we’re receiving from all around us,” Schoenbrun previously told The Hollywood Reporter about the film. “At least for me, I think these glimpses of other worlds through a screen in childhood were often signals of some form of magic or otherness or possibility hidden in a way on the margins of the normative world that I was growing up in, that made some kind of promise to me. And I don’t think that this is an experience that only queer trans people go through.”

I Saw the TV Glow hits theaters on May 3.

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

• Most Anticipated Movie Releases of 2024

• ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy Cast, Then and Now

• Eight Actors Who Have Played Willy Wonka in Films and on Broadway