I Saw the TV Glow's director might be a genius. That doesn't mean the movie is

Here, that mastery continues: made with intention, Schoenbrun's vision is topped only by obviously deliberate execution in a visually stunning, confidently subtle allegory for the constantly evolving horrors of growing up in a modern hellscape.

The surface story follows Owen — at the beginning, a timid seventh grader dragged along to election night at the local high school, and initially played by Let the Right One In's series star Ian Foreman.

Awash in the blue filter that both telegraphs our overall mood and the 90s nostalgia seemingly pumped into the set's air vents, Owen quietly wanders past pastel-coloured lockers and the Keith Haring inspired-Fruitopia vending machines that more or less defined the decade.

The too-good and too-modern-to-be-true X-Files Jr. feels more like Adventure Time through a rose-coloured screen than actual memory, and perhaps the sole point where a hiccup in Schoenbrun's direction makes it difficult to stay immersed in their world.

Later, he ends a conversation with his concerned mother by spitting on turquoise cotton candy, cowers when his father questions whether Pink Opaque isn't "a show for girls," and storms past hallway signs with encouraging words like "pain is weakness leaving the body," "veni, vidi, vici" and "to thine own self be true."

Films that use the setting to live, not play dress up — like Mean Creek's Josh Peck screaming very standard youthful slurs, or Super Dark Times' annoyance at poor technology rather than reverence of it — show an era that doesn't feel improved into obscurity.