Digging at the end of Jane Schoenbrun's powerful, painful, personal film

I Saw the TV Glow has the kind of ending that makes people run to the internet looking for explainers and conversations – not because they didn't get it exactly, but because they don't necessarily believe what they just saw. Jane Schoenbrun's sequel to 2022's We're All Going to the World's Fair is a dark film: dark in the visuals, because so much of it takes place in nauseating late spaces and dark, muddy interiors and dark in the narrative details, which are not designed to comfort or embrace viewers. This is not a feel-good movie with a clapping, heartwarming ending.

But it's a film that seems designed to get under its viewers' skins and let them examine their lives and their choices. Schoenbrun urges people to take any lingering discomfort that comes out of the end of the film and go do something about it. It's a call to action, although what exactly "action" means is left wide open. Schoenbrun has a specific intention in mind, but the metaphor here is also broad enough that anyone watching this film can wrap it tightly around their own lives and their own bodies until it fits them.

[Ed. Note: End spoilers ahead for I Saw the TV Glow.]