Review: Public Access Afterworld by Jane Schoenbrun (Spoiler-Free)

Maybe think of this text as a seance.

Some people are obsessed with David Lynch. Fascinated with Fellini. Enraptured by Scorsese and Buñuel and Capra. My mind has been consumed by Jane Schoenbrun.

It all started one night in 2024, huddled up in my basement in the New Jersey suburbs. I rented a horror movie I'd heard about online—one with great reviews that I didn't know anything else about. I pulled a Jets Snuggie over my shoulders, turned off the lights, and hit play.

Throughout most of it, I had no idea what I was watching. There was a loose mystery, but none of it really made sense. I thought it was going one way, but it turned out that the film didn't operate under cardinal directions. When the credits rolled, I was skeptical. I thought I liked it? But I wasn't quite sure how much.

The next night (within the 48 hour rental window), I watched it again. And everything changed.

Jane Schoenbrun is a surrealist genius and one of the only filmmakers working today who has truly dug into the heart of the depressed suburban weird kid Gen Z psyche (shoutout Donnie Darko for pioneering the genre from the Gen X perspective). Especially of the hyper-online variety.

I Saw the TV Glow and We're All Going to the World's Fair are two of my favorite films of all time, and I mean that in all capacities. Theme, style, format, structure, dialogue, direction... Schoenbrun sings to me through the screen.

And the exact same can be said of their debut novel. I am incredibly lucky to have been able to get my hands on an advanced copy, and even luckier that I got to read it the week leading up to the premiere of their latest film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (and got to attend their Q&A!!).

I won't give anything substantial away since I'm writing this ahead of the book's release, but if you're interested in the usual Schoenbrun motifs (hallucinated TV shows, online horror RPGs, ridiculous reboots, trans identity, etc.), you will eat up this story. If I had to encapsulate it in some easy to digest comps, I'd say: Blake Crouch meets the Davids (Lynch and Cronenberg). Dark Matter meets Mulholland Drive à la Videodrome.

So, while you're waiting for this novel to officially hit shelves, I'd highly recommend you dive into the author's filmography and see their latest on the big screen!

~ Release date: October 27, 2026 ~ All quotations are from an uncorrected proof and are subject to change.