Viewers are turning to Jane Schoenbrun’s queer horror films for something rarer than a jump scare: recognition. From online identity in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair to television, transition and lost time in I Saw the TV Glow, the filmmaker makes the genre’s strangest corners feel intimate, unsettling and unexpectedly welcoming.
Essential Takeaways
- Fear becomes personal: Schoenbrun’s films focus on identity, isolation and the anxiety of feeling out of place.
- Screens shape the story: The internet and television act as mirrors, portals and possible routes to belonging.
- The horror is often social: Their characters are frightened less by difference than by pressure to conceal it.
- Camp Miasma changes the mood: The planned slasher leans into sex, humour, blood and theatrical excess.
- The look matters: CRT screens, coloured lighting and grainy images create a dreamy, half-remembered atmosphere.
The monster is no longer the whole story
Queer horror has a long, complicated history. For decades, queer desire and gender nonconformity were pushed into coded figures such as vampires, outsiders and monsters. The result was often thrilling to watch, but hardly comforting: difference could appear on screen, provided the story eventually treated it as dangerous.
Jane Schoenbrun starts from a more revealing question. What if the frightening part isn't being different, but spending years trying to hide that difference? Their work shifts attention away from the supposed monster and towards the world that teaches people to fear themselves.
That makes the films unsettling in a soft, lingering way. The dread doesn't always arrive with a roar. Sometimes it feels more like the cold glow of a television in an empty room. RogerEbert.com has described Schoenbrun's cinema as deeply concerned with queer experience, transformation and the uneasy space between revelation and despair. [2]
World’s Fair finds terror behind the screen
In We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, a teenager joins an online horror challenge and begins documenting changes she believes are happening to her body and personality. The film never settles comfortably into a single explanation, leaving reality, role-play and fantasy to bleed into one another.
That ambiguity is the point. The internet isn't simply presented as a sinister machine corrupting a vulnerable young person. It becomes a place to experiment, perform and search for contact. Casey may be looking for attention, community or a version of herself that feels possible somewhere beyond her everyday life.
Schoenbrun's approach is quieter than a standard warning about online danger. Instead, the film asks why strange digital spaces can feel so attractive to lonely people. RogerEbert.com's discussion of the director's work highlights this interest in online identity and the emotional pull of virtual communities. [3]
Why I Saw the TV Glow feels so painfully familiar
If World’s Fair treats the internet as a space of uncertain discovery, I Saw the TV Glow makes television feel like a secret doorway. Owen and Maddy bond over The Pink Opaque, a strange programme that seems to offer them a place where ordinary rules no longer apply.
When that shared world begins to disappear, so does Owen's certainty about his own life. The film's central terror isn't a creature waiting in the dark. It's the suspicion that you've been performing the wrong version of yourself for years.
That idea has resonated especially strongly with trans viewers, although the film leaves room for broader readings about identity and regret. The television image becomes a kind of emotional x-ray: familiar, comforting and impossible to look at for too long. As RogerEbert.com notes, Schoenbrun's films often turn media memories into gateways for self-recognition. [4]
A queer horror film can offer comfort, too
Horror is usually associated with violence and destruction, but Schoenbrun is equally interested in what the genre can preserve. A frightening story can give viewers language for feelings that are otherwise slippery, private or difficult to explain.
That matters for queer audiences, who have often found community through films, television, music and online spaces before they could find it in their immediate surroundings. In this context, a screen isn't merely an object in the room. It's a mirror, a window and occasionally an escape hatch.
The emotional effect is unusual. These films can leave viewers shaken, but also less alone. RogerEbert.com's analysis presents Schoenbrun's cinema as a form of queer horror that processes isolation while making room for connection. [5]
The visual style makes alienation look beautiful
Schoenbrun's stories are matched by a distinctive visual language. Old televisions, hazy footage, suburban spaces, artificial colours and early-internet textures create worlds that feel both nostalgic and slightly defective.
That sense of wrongness is crucial. Watching I Saw the TV Glow can feel like remembering an event that never happened. The images are recognisable, yet they refuse to settle into comfort. A pink or blue wash, a flickering screen and a too-quiet room can suggest a memory trying to surface.
For viewers seeking queer horror films about identity and belonging, the atmosphere is as important as the plot. The style recreates the experience of being close to something meaningful but unable to fully enter it. RogerEbert.com similarly connects Schoenbrun's visual choices with memory, media and the unsettled feeling of living outside an expected script. [6]
Camp Miasma promises bloodier, campier chaos
Schoenbrun's next turn towards slasher territory pushes the same concerns into a louder register. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma follows Kris, a queer filmmaker developing a remake of an older horror franchise, and her meeting with the actress associated with its original film.
The project brings together sex, desire, cinema and genre mythology, but it also appears to loosen the melancholy grip of the earlier films. Expect more colour, more blood and considerably more theatrical mischief. In other words, the monster gets a bigger dressing room.
That shift is significant. Queering horror doesn't have to mean making it solemn or realistic. It can mean taking control of the genre's rules, exaggerating them and enjoying the mess. RogerEbert.com frames Schoenbrun's broader project as an attempt to remake horror from within rather than simply add queer characters to an existing formula. [7]
The result is a body of work that treats strangeness as a source of knowledge rather than shame. The fear remains, but it points somewhere new: towards the pressure to remain legible, obedient and unchanged.
It's a small but powerful reversal. The monster may not be the person trying to become themselves, but the world insisting they shouldn't.
Source Reference Map
Story idea inspired by: [1]
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