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13-year-old Kayla ( Elsie Fisher ) hosts a Youtube series called "Kayla's Korner" where she gives advice to an imagined audience of her peers. She picks topics like "Being Yourself" and "Putting Yourself Out There" and stumbles her way through a pep-talk peppered with "like" and glances at her notes. A glimpse of the subscriber count shows that Kayla's Korner hasn't exactly taken off. "Eighth Grade," the extraordinarily assured feature film debut by writer-director and standup comedian Bo Burnham , starts out with one of these videos and it is so touchingly real, so embarrassingly true to life, you might swear it was improvised, or found footage. But it's not. This is Elsie Fisher, a 13-year-old actress herself, amazingly in touch with what it's like to be in the stage of life she's actually in . Kayla airbrushes out her acne, and swoops on heavy eyeliner. When you see what her life is actually like the Kayla's Korner videos take on an almost tragic significance. But it's strangely hopeful too. This is a young girl trying to understand what she is going through, and she does so by positioning herself as an expert and a helper to others. 

Kayla lives at home with her dad ( Josh Hamilton ). There's no mother in the picture (why isn't explained until near the end). Her dad struggles to keep a connection with his adolescent daughter, who seems hell bent on shutting him out. The dad's attempts at conversation ("Are you excited about high school?" "You're such a cool kid, those videos you do? They're amazing.") mortify her. Kayla doesn't have any friends, and harbors a gigantic crush on the sleepy-eyed uber-confident Aiden ( Luke Prael ), swooning whenever she looks at him. She also stares longingly at Kennedy, the Queen Bee of middle school ( Catherine Oliviere ). 

Bo Burnham knows that of all the terrors in this world, there is nothing quite as terrifying as being a shy 8th grader, attending a birthday party for the most popular kid in school. Filmed like a moment from "Amityville Horror," Kayla stands at the sliding glass doors in her lime-green one-piece bathing suit, shoulders hunched, arms dangling down, staring out at the playful shenanigans of her classmates, all of whom display the social ease utterly unattainable to an outsider like Kayla. Burnham pulls the camera back slowly, as the electronic music (composed by Anna Meredith ) blots out all other sound, with Kayla hovering in the background, a ghostly figure seen through glass. "Eighth Grade" is full of stylistic flourishes like this. A flourish can be empty, a flourish can keep the audience comfortably "above" the action onscreen. But Burnham knows what he's doing. Every moment is life-or-death when you're 13. These flourishes identify us so strongly with Kayla that every social scenario is pierced with emotional peril. 

There's all kinds of sublimated "commentary" in "Eighth Grade" about what it's like to be a teenager today: constant internet use, scrolling through the carefully curated Instagram feeds of classmates, the societal pressure to seem "okay" and "fabulous" all the time. When a teenager feels pressure to "perform" her life on Instagram or Snapchat, it changes the game in subtle ways that probably aren't even understood yet. But Burnham keeps the touch light and humorous. He doesn't lecture from a podium. There's an overhead shot of a school assembly, showing hundreds of kids sitting there clutching their phones in their hands. In a chilling sequence, the kids are put through a lockdown drill, where they have to hide under the desks from a hypothetical shooter. They all crouch there, waiting for it to be over, faces lit up by the glow of their phones. But Burnham stays down on the ground with the kids, he's in the thick of it. If social media can keep us disconnected from one another, it can also connect us. After a day "shadowing" a kindly high-school student named Olivia ( Emily Robinson ), Kayla gets up the courage to call Olivia and thank her, and Olivia is thrilled in her new role as mentor and friend. She even invites Kayla to come hang out at the mall. 

Darker moments threaten. An encounter with an older boy, who tries to force her to play Truth or Dare in the back of his car, highlights just how terrifyingly young she is. She has insanely passionate feelings for Aiden, but all the other stuff—wanting to do  anything about those feelings—are not there for her yet. Her father trails along behind her, trying to give her space, but also worried about what might be going on. His concern makes him "hover," and Kayla is desperate to get away from him, but in a late scene, when she asks him if it makes him "sad" to have her as a daughter—his shock that she would feel that way about herself is heartbreaking. 

"Eighth Grade" is so grounded in the reality of middle school it almost operates like a horrible collective flashback. All of the kids in the cast are real middle-schoolers, not 20-somethings playing at adolescence. There's a vast difference between a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old, but this has—typically—been difficult for films to acknowledge or portray. The struggles of teenagers are woven into our cinematic history. But middle school kids? It's harder. 8th graders still have one foot in the sandbox. They are still children, but with bodies exploding into young adulthood, creating a miasma of self-loathing, hormonal surges, irritability ... When the parade of middle schoolers walk in single file into the high school for "shadow" day, the high school kids lining the hallways look like adults in comparison. 

Burnham knows how middle-schoolers really talk. They stumble, they repeat themselves, they try to sound older, but can't help reverting. They don't have a handle on social language yet. "I like your shirt ... I have a shirt too," Kayla says to Kennedy, who stares at Kayla with such dead eyes you can tell she can't wait to look at her phone again. When the Truth or Dare boy says something suggestive, the anxious confused Kayla murmurs to herself, "Okay," but what comes out is, "O-kee..." Fisher's actual age is one of the reasons "Eighth Grade" has such a sense of verisimilitude. Her smile is so rare that when it comes it almost cracks her face, but the joy is so enormous is threatens to push her into a panic attack. She is in the stage of becoming herself. Her dad's loving anxiety is the audience's. But "Eighth Grade", with all its emotional intensity, is not about "what happens." It's about what it feels like to be thirteen. Middle school sucks. Everybody knows that. It's a stage you have to go through. But while you're there, it feels like it goes on forever . Try telling a 13-year-old "This too shall pass." 

Bo Burnham, who got his start as a teenager making Youtube videos of his comedy routines, is only 27 years old. He respects where Kayla is at. He doesn't condescend to her, or to anyone else. "Eighth Grade" is an act of nervy humorous empathy.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Eighth Grade (2018)

Rated R for language and some sexual material.

Elsie Fisher as Kayla

Josh Hamilton as Mark

Daniel Zolghadri as Riley

Frank Deal as Officer Todd

Greg Crowe as Principal McDaniels

Emily Robinson as Olivia

Cinematographer

• Andrew Wehde
• Jennifer Lilly
• Anna Meredith

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Eighth grade, common sense media reviewers.

Painfully realistic, tenderly acted coming-of-age dramedy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Promotes open communication between teens and pare

Kayla isn't perfect, but she's kind, curious, cour

The middle school goes through an active shooter d

A teen boy is thought to be masturbating in class

Strong language, often used by teens: "f--k," "s--

Several brands visible: MacBook, iPhone, LL Bean,

A boy is shown sniffing a marker, presumably for a

Parent need to know that Eighth Grade is an extremely realistic, relatable indie dramedy directed by YouTube star Bo Burnham about going through adolescence. Elsie Fisher (the voice of Agnes in Despicable Me ) stars as socially awkward eighth grader Kayla, a social media-savvy teen who's enduring the…

Positive Messages

Promotes open communication between teens and parents, including through device-free dinners (in one scene, Kayla is on her phone for a whole meal, until her father asks her to take out her earbuds so they can talk), social media boundaries, and one-on-one sharing of what's going on at school and personally. Explores the difficulties of going through adolescence in the age of social media -- and the courage it takes to love and speak up for yourself as a teen.

Positive Role Models

Kayla isn't perfect, but she's kind, curious, courageous, and hopeful, even during moments of sadness. She learns to love herself and speak up for herself, and she has hope for the future. Her father, though also not perfect, is concerned, caring, and encouraging.

Violence & Scariness

The middle school goes through an active shooter drill in which an authority pretends to shoot the kids who didn't hide properly. He makes the kids repeat what they're supposed to do during a real school shooting.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A teen boy is thought to be masturbating in class during a sex ed video about puberty: His T-shirt is pulled over his head and knees, and noises and hand movements can be seen. A girl stares longingly and lustfully at a boy her age. Suggestive comments and conversations about hook-up culture, sharing nude photos, and "how far" Kayla has gone or is willing to go physically with a boy; she tells someone she's really good at oral sex. Kayla then researches oral sex on YouTube; video screen shots and brief glimpse of a sex toy are shown. She picks up a banana to, presumably, practice but is interrupted. A boy takes his shirt off during a game of Truth or Dare and asks Kayla to do the same; she refuses.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language, often used by teens: "f--k," "s--t," "d--k," "ass," "goddamn," "p---y," "Jesus Christ," "loser," etc. Also sex-related terms, including "blow job." Middle-finger gestures.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Several brands visible: MacBook, iPhone, LL Bean, Adidas, Steph Curry jersey, Instagram, Chevy Tahoe, Gatorade, Buzzfeed, Speedo, Vans, Coca-Cola/Diet Coke, Snapchat, Charlotte Russe, YouTube, Mountain Dew, Claire's, Hamilton calendar , Rick and Morty .

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A boy is shown sniffing a marker, presumably for a potential high.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parent need to know that Eighth Grade is an extremely realistic, relatable indie dramedy directed by YouTube star Bo Burnham about going through adolescence. Elsie Fisher (the voice of Agnes in Despicable Me ) stars as socially awkward eighth grader Kayla, a social media-savvy teen who's enduring the awkward transition between middle and high school. The biggest red flag here is the frequent strong language ("f--k," "s--t," "p---y," and more). But despite the swearing and some suggestive comments and conversations about hook-up culture, implied masturbation, oral sex, sharing nude photos, and "how far" Kayla has gone or is willing to go physically with a boy, this is a good (if slightly cringeworthy) movie to watch with your teen. There's so much here for parents and their teens to unpack, from mean-girl behavior and too much/inappropriate screen use to the importance of being careful around older teens (particularly for girls) and saying no to unwanted sexual advances. Ultimately, it also promotes open communication between teens and their parents, as well as courage, since Kayla learns to love and speak up for herself. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (47)
• Kids say (58)

Based on 47 parent reviews

HAD TO TURN IT OFF

Inappropriate, what's the story.

Directed by YouTube star Bo Burnham , EIGHTH GRADE (also known as 8th Grade ) follows quiet, socially anxious Kayla ( Elsie Fisher ) as she navigates her last couple of weeks of middle school. Although she says relatively little at school (where she's literally voted the quietest girl in the class for the yearbook), Kayla does post short, topic-based videos on social media from the privacy of her bedroom, but not too many people watch them. Raised by a well-meaning but clueless single father ( Josh Hamilton ), Kayla struggles with a lead-up to middle school graduation that includes a few unexpected adventures, from an awkward crush on a popular bro to a forced invitation to a queen bee's birthday pool party to a special day at the local high school for incoming ninth graders.

Is It Any Good?

Fisher is fabulous in writer-director Burnham's poignant, sensitive exploration of the challenges of early adolescence in the age of social media and constant phone use. Burnham understands that middle school is the most awkward time in most kids' life and that the eighth grade in particular is a fragile transition year as young teens struggle with social status, puberty, and preparing for high school. Kayla knows she's considered one of the quietest girls in her class, and she's fine with that, because at home she records and uploads videos of herself talking about gaining more confidence, getting out of her comfort zone, and other self-help topics. Personally, her goals are pretty universal: She wants more friends, in particular one Best Friend, and a possible romance. But her social anxiety and earnest demeanor make it difficult for Kayla to relate to other teens, especially well-liked girls like Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), or Aiden (Luke Prael), the boy Kayla is crushing on, who's apparently only interested in girls who've gone past second base.

Eighth Grade is (thankfully) not as explicit as Thirteen , but it's nearly as heartbreaking for different reasons -- at least for parents of teens. Luckily the movie has a somewhat hopeful message, as Kayla recognizes that making a connection with her father and finding friendship are both possible, if not with the so-called popular kids she admires. The pain Kayla expresses is incredibly realistic, and it will squeeze adult audiences' hearts as they watch a young girl attempt to find her place in an unforgiving social environment. There's a wonderful "aha" moment when Kayla finds her voice, and the inner middle schooler in all of us will cheer for the shy girl who's willing to tell the truth to her peers: Don't front, it's OK to be grateful and kind and to have fun playing games with your family, and to not be in a rush to grow up before you're ready.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about whether Eighth Grade feels realistic. Why or why not? What makes Kayla and her struggles relatable? Is she courageous ? If so, how? Do you consider her a role model ?

How are social media and screen time depicted in the movie? How is Kayla affected by all the time she spends online? Parents: Talk to your teens about boundaries and limits to screen/social media use .

Has your family ever tried a " device-free dinner "? If so, how did it go? If not, would you consider it?

How would you describe the relationship between the teen characters and their parents? Are these relationships realistic or exaggerated for humor? How does the movie promote communication between teens and parents?

Do you think strong language is or should be enough of a reason to restrict teens from seeing a movie about characters their age? Teens: How prevalent is swearing in your life? Does strong language make a movie more or less relatable to you?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 13, 2018
• On DVD or streaming : October 9, 2018
• Cast : Elsie Fisher , Josh Hamilton , Emily Robinson
• Director : Bo Burnham
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : A24
• Genre : Comedy
• Character Strengths : Communication , Courage
• Run time : 94 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language and some sexual material
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : February 2, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Eighth Grade Reviews

Eighth Grade is a carefully constructed love letter to the messy, confusing years of middle school, and a reassurance to those going through it that things will eventually be okay.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

This is the kind of reassuring warm hug that’s actually a lie as pernicious as one in any romcom.

Full Review | Jan 6, 2023

Essential viewing for teenagers about to enter secondary (or high) school in the age of social media, as well as parents trying to understand or just get a glimpse inside what their children are doing on their phones all day.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 10, 2022

“Eighth Grade” doesn’t pave an easy path for its lead character. Kayla’s struggles are realistic, relatable and heartbreaking. You could almost call it relentless if not for the welcomed moments of levity strategically sprinkled throughout.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 20, 2022

"Eighth Grade" endeavors to tell the ponderous plight of this current connected generation and nails it with astonishing honesty and freshness.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 14, 2022

Eighth Grade is one of those rare films that speaks to everyone, regardless of its subjective specificity, through universal life lessons that every person must learn and overcome before becoming an adult.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 11, 2022

Burnham challenges us to look back on our own pasts and give those meme-ready phone surfers a big break.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2022

A relentlessly incisive and anxiety-inducing dumbo drop into the worst time of our collective lives

Full Review | Jan 10, 2022

Earnest and sweet, fumbling and awkward.

Full Review | Original Score: 70/100 | Aug 22, 2021

Eighth Grade, the film by first time writer-director Bo Burnham, is not for eighth graders. But if you're a parent, grandparent, or anyone who cares deeply about the 13 or 14 year-old in your life, this film is for you.

Full Review | Aug 13, 2021

Starring the naturally sympathetic young actress Elsie Fisher, it's a vivid and sometimes quietly heartbreaking reminder of how awkward growing up can be.

Full Review | May 11, 2021

Bo Burnham's brilliant directing debut will take you back to the awful awkwardness of adolescence.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 29, 2021

It's a crime that Elsie Fisher hasn't won every award possible for her work as the lead, and Josh Hamilton also deserves praise for his performance as Kayla's dad...

Full Review | Apr 16, 2021

Alfred Hitchcock allegedly claimed "drama is life with the dull bits cut out"; Eighth Grade instead makes the dull bits interesting. It is a surprising film - and a wonderful one.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Mar 17, 2021

Eighth Grade reminds us of the familiar growing pains in that unbalanced time transitioning from middle school to high school.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 3, 2021

An unvarnished, pimples and all, look at adolescence and the anxiety that comes with it

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 28, 2021

... an important movie that should be seen, thought about, and discussed, ideally with someone who's not your age.

Full Review | Feb 18, 2021

Eighth Grade has a way of hitting you right between the eyes with the real-life turmoil of being a teenager no matter how old you are now.

Full Review | Dec 10, 2020

Because of its aim to highlight the negative aspects that shape transitions into adulthood, the film poses a unique, profound perspective.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 5, 2020

Burnham's film gets the job done, delivering a fresh spin on the teenage angst genre.

Full Review | Nov 10, 2020

Breaking News

Review: Bo Burnham’s ‘Eighth Grade’ is a beautifully honest portrait of adolescent girlhood

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At a few points in “Eighth Grade,” Bo Burnham’s sharp, sensitive and enormously affecting new movie, you might feel the urge to snatch the phone out of someone’s hand and hurl it against the wall. (No, not the guy texting in the seat next to you, although you have my blessing.) I’m thinking mainly of the scene in which a shy middle schooler named Kayla Day (a terrific Elsie Fisher) bravely initiates a casual conversation with two popular girls in her class. They offer one-word replies and keep their eyes on their phones, hoping to get this strained interaction over with as quickly as possible.

The girls aren’t bullies; they regard Kayla not with hatred so much as embarrassment and indifference. In their still-developing young minds, ignoring this desperate loser might be the kindest thing they could do. They’re wrong, and on more than one count. Kayla may be shy, self-conscious and tongue-tied — hardly a rare condition for a kid her age — but it doesn’t take more than a few seconds for us to see how, like, totally not a loser she really is.

Sadly, the only other person in Kayla’s world who sees this doesn’t count: It’s her father, Mark (Josh Hamilton), who has raised her alone for many years, and who keeps her hooked up to a steady IV drip of affection. He’s understanding enough to know that his daughter is at that moody age when a parent is the last person you’d want to confide in. But whenever Mark gently reaches across the generational chasm (“I think you’re so cool,” he gushes at the dinner table), Kayla scowls in exasperation and slaps on her headphones. She, too, isn’t above using personal technology to tune out the world.

One of the pleasures of Kayla’s story is that it invites us to tune out along with her. At once wryly observational and dreamily empathetic, “Eighth Grade” draws us back again and again into Kayla’s digital cocoon, sometimes cranking up the music to entrancing effect (she’s especially fond of classic Enya) and allowing the bright light of her smartphone screen to lull us into a trance. But Burnham knows that Kayla can’t hide from the world forever, and he spends the rest of this intimate, emotionally expansive movie trying to coax her out.

The story unfolds over the last week of school, though it could be any week in most respects. Kayla moves anxiously through the crowded hallways, talking to no one, staring down at the floor. (The camera often follows her from behind, as if it were stalking and shielding her at the same time.) She finds herself distracted by a good-looking classmate named Aiden (Luke Prael), though it takes some time for her to work up the nerve to talk to him.

She’s voted the “most quiet” girl in her class, which is of course the most mortifying public recognition a quiet girl could receive. The thing is, Kayla isn’t even really that quiet. It’s just that precious few people have taken the time to get to know her and unleash her inner chatterbox. At home, she records personal videos for her YouTube channel, where she doles out enthusiastic, stammering advice on subjects like “being yourself” and “having confidence.”

Kayla, needless to say, isn’t great at taking her own advice. The deeper irony here is that Burnham, a 27-year-old actor, musician and comedian making his writing-directing debut, himself came to fame as a teenage YouTube star, earning millions of clicks and stirring occasional controversy with his satirical, smart-alecky videos.

One of the key themes of “Eighth Grade” is the degree to which the Internet has warped, and tainted, the experience of growing up. Middle school may be one of those universally crummy experiences, when life is cruel and kids are crueler. But most of us were at least fortunate enough to endure it without having to worry about the specific humiliations of social media, to say nothing of the temptations of sexting and online pornography, to name a few of the issues that the story brushes up against.

But if Burnham at times seems to be biting the hand that feeds him, he happily manages to do so without wagging his own finger. “Eighth Grade” never feels like a simplistic broadside against technology, bullying, helicopter parenting or any other issues of the week. Nor does it traffic in either the bright, mock-Darwinian humor of “Mean Girls” (2004) or the corrosively dark comedy of “Welcome to the Dollhouse” (1995), to name two very different generationally beloved portraits of adolescent girlhood. More than anything, this emotionally unsparing but never-punishing movie feels like the work of someone who kept his eyes and ears wide open.

There’s a touch of the cultural anthropologist to Burnham’s approach. Some of his throwaway observations, like the shot of a kid sniffing a highlighter pen in class, feel like something out of a wildlife documentary. His approach surely accounts for the movie’s remarkably naturalistic ear for dialogue; it’s been a while since I’ve heard a screenplay so fully master the awkward, hesitant rhythms of everyday teen-speak. (Speaking of language: The expletives in the dialogue are almost certainly what triggered a ridiculous R rating for one of the few theatrical releases it would actually benefit teenagers to seek out.)

Burnham and his ensemble pay careful attention to the placement of every “uh,” “like” and “you know,” a touch that never feels like mannerism or overwhelms the characters’ distinct speech patterns. Among the young actors making strong impressions here are Emily Robinson, Imani Lewis and Daniel Zolghadri as three high school students who briefly take Kayla under wing, and Jake Ryan as Gabe, a smart, easygoing kid who genuinely seems to enjoy Kayla’s company.

The viewer is likely to feel similarly, which is no small credit to Fisher’s funny, watchful and utterly persuasive performance. Kayla may be the kind of person no one seems to notice, but Burnham gives us no choice: He and his cinematographer, Andrew Wehde, bring the camera so close to Kayla that we can register every nervous laugh, every deer-in-the-headlights stare, every bad flareup of acne. And Fisher neither wilts under the camera’s scrutiny nor succumbs to the temptation to stare it down. She gives precise form and delicate feeling to emotions and experiences that, despite the specificity of the circumstances, most everyone will recognize.

It’s amazing how little and how much can happen in a week, or even a moment. Kayla goes to a pool party where almost everyone, including the birthday girl, ignores her. She sings karaoke. She nearly gets herself into trouble, but is quick to assert and protect herself. She mourns the loss of childhood, but realizes that even the biggest setbacks will soon be distant memories. She realizes, not a minute too soon, that her dad is actually pretty cool. It’s in the subtle braiding of these moments, of the banal and the revelatory, that the truth of this lovely, heartbreaking movie quietly asserts itself: It’s all no big deal, and it all adds up to everything.

------------

‘Eighth Grade’

Rating: R, for language and some sexual material

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Playing: Opens July 13 at the Landmark, West Los Angeles

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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Review: All the Feels, Hurts and Laughs of ‘Eighth Grade’

• Share full article

By Manohla Dargis

• July 11, 2018

There are few more poignant, exasperating creatures than teenage girls. (I speak from personal experience.) And rarely are they as heart-pangingly real as the girl fumbling through the sharp, smart comedy “Eighth Grade.” Like a lot of people, Kayla (the wonderful Elsie Fisher), spends a lot of time tethered to a cellphone that serves as her touchingly imperfect portal to the world. Day and deep into night, she scrolls through screen after screen of images — celebrities, cartoons, celebrity cartoons, stranger selfies — sprinkled with hashtags, online handles, candy-colored effects and emojis.

A hyper-connected voyeur, Kayla seems hooked on other people’s experiences and emotions, a torrent suggesting that they, unlike her, are living their best lives and having the coolest, most awesome time. In an unplugged era, she might have just tucked into a corner with a hardcover diary, dotting her I’s with hearts as she poured out her most intimate thoughts. Instead, she watches. She also makes affirmational videos that she posts on her online channel, which is one of this movie’s shrewdest conceits. “The topic of today’s video,” she announces in one, “is being yourself,” before doling out some commendable advice: “Don’t care about what other people think about you.”

Child, heal thyself! That’s what you may find yourself thinking as “Eighth Grade” opens and Kayla slumps off to class, walking with shoulders hunched and head bowed against the chattering, exuberant student tide coming at her. It’s the last week of eighth grade, and it’s hard not to feel for the poor thing. It’s also hard not to feel exasperated by what makes Kayla so dear — her frailties, mistakes, gawkiness — as she doodles alone at lunch or buries her head in her hands after being voted “most quiet” by the other students.

[ Eighth graders watch “Eighth Grade,” and they can relate. ]

“Eighth Grade” is a simple story of an unremarkable girl, tenderly and movingly told. It was written and directed by Bo Burnham , a stand-up comic who started out by posting videos of himself on YouTube. He obviously has some ideas about the internet, which takes away so much — time, sanity, reason — but also gives. For Kayla, being online is a way of being and of becoming. That’s not necessarily understandable to grown-ups, including her single father, Mark (a note-perfect Josh Hamilton), who, with eyebrows at full alert, hovers around her with a look of barely suppressed panic bordering on terror, as if one ill-timed word or gesture could destroy life as they know it.

Movies about teenagers are often filled with contrived excesses, but Mr. Burnham understands that some of the most pronounced extremes — the drama, the comedy, the horror — take place in that lonely room known as our heads. Not much happens in “Eighth Grade” except that, for Kayla, everything does and with exclamation points. When she stares at a cute boy (Luke Prael), the music thunders and the image slows, much as it did when Dudley Moore gawked at Bo Derek once upon a time. And when Kayla walks into a pool party wearing a tragic green swimsuit, she turns into the imperiled heroine of a psychodrama that briefly transforms into a psychological thriller.

The pool party is a squirmy tour de force embellished with a punctuating zoom and a plangent sense of dread that make Kayla’s isolation feel like alienation. From the way that she walks into the party — she scans the scene like a soldier heading into battle, clutching her middle as if already wounded — it’s evident that Kayla believes everyone is looking at her. What makes the scene more uncomfortable and touching is that as she wades into the suffocating surge of the cute and popular, no one even notices her. (The one attendee who does is a nerd delightfully played by Jake Ryan.) It’s a brutal scene and might have been unbearably painful if Mr. Burnham didn’t love Kayla so much.

But he does (and he’s funny), a love that Ms. Fisher — only 14 when the movie was shot — complements with a performance that’s so visceral and unforced that you might find yourself transported back in time and walking again into an agonizingly similar party, thighs swishing. Part of what makes her feel so convincing is that for all her time online, Kayla looks and moves like an actual underage human being. She isn’t as smoothed and hollowed out as the smiling avatars she watches. She’s an image-obsessed 21st-century adolescent staring at a screen, but she’s also just another teenager lurching forward, one comic, hapless step at a time.

It would be easy to read “Eighth Grade” as a simple cautionary tale — the following should be read in the disproving voice of adult received wisdom — about Kids These Days. Yet to do so would be to miss a crucial point about Kayla’s videos, which are at once an act of creation and self-creation. (And, by extension, are like this movie.) Kayla is lucky if she gets two views for a video, yet she continues making them, yammering into the seeming void. No matter how lousy or lonely her day, she tries to keep talking, pushing on, reaching out. She knows — or just hopes — that someone, somewhere, is paying attention, a much-tested optimism that Mr. Burnham celebrates beautifully.

Picture credits with an earlier version of this article misidentified the photographer. The pictures are by Josh Ethan Johnson, not Linda Kallerus.

How we handle corrections

Eighth Grade Rated R for real human language. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes.

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Film Review: ‘Eighth Grade’

Discover newcomer Elsie Fisher in, like, a totally spot-on, you know, portrait of Millennial angst and stuff, from first-time director Bo Burnham.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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No one likes eighth grade. It’s the compulsory military service of American adolescence, the cod liver oil every child must swallow on her way to adulthood. In the rigged Russian roulette game of human genetics, it’s the bullet in the chamber, that pimple-infested, body-odorous, hair-in-uncomfortable-new-places minimum-security prison every girl must endure, the real-life horror movie to which you can’t close your eyes. Worst of all, the scars that happen here are pretty much guaranteed to haunt you for life.

Welcome to “Eighth Grade,” kids! Whether it’s been two days or two decades since you suffered through it yourself, your heart goes out to Kayla ( Elsie Fisher ), the young woman we meet tightrope-walking over those shark-infested waters in writer-director Bo Burnham ’s remarkable feature debut. If Burnham’s name doesn’t ring a bell, then you most likely belong to the demographic who will see this movie as a cross between last year’s “Lady Bird” (also produced by Scott Rudin) and Larry Clark’s ultra-cautionary “Kids,” identifying with Kayla’s dad (Josh Hamilton, rivaling Michael Stuhlbarg in “Call Me by Your Name” for World’s Greatest Dad) as his daughter narrowly avoids (or not) the landmines upon which you’d gladly throw yourself in her place.

Like a taller and less-tattooed version of Justin Bieber, Burnham began his career on YouTube in late 2006 with an original song called “My Whole Family Thinks I’m Gay.” He was 16 at the time, three years older than Kayla’s character, and somehow managed to leverage his viral-video success into a comedy songwriting career, turning his quick-witted insights into piercingly funny, unapologetically irreverent rap songs. Apart from a handful of lo-fi music videos Burnham has made over the years, there was nothing to suggest that he had it in him to direct a film, which makes “Eighth Grade” one of the sweetest surprises of this year’s Sundance.

Bead-braided, 10-rated ’70s sex symbols aside, Bo is a boy’s name, of course, which makes this gender-flipped act of adolescent empathy all the more remarkable. Every year, Sundance is littered with deeply narcissistic, transparently autobiographical coming-of-age stories. As Hollywood lawyer Linda Lichter so aptly put it Peter Biskind’s “Down and Dirty Pictures”: “At Sundance, the bulk of the pictures are about losing your virginity. It’s babies making movies about babies. With some exceptions, the filmmakers don’t really have a voice yet.”

Burnham is that exception. An accomplished comedian, Burnham has already put in his 10,000 hours, honing what he has to say for nearly a dozen years, and as such, “Eighth Grade” shines as, like, a totally spot-on, you know, portrait of Millennial angst and stuff. That may be how Kayla (and all her peers) talk, punctuating their quasi-articulate ideas with hesitant “ums” and “ahs,” but Burnham shows a sociolinguist’s ear for the cadence and flow of 21st-century girl-speak, and Fisher (who dubbed adorable young Agnes in all three “Despicable Me” movies, but will almost certainly be new to audiences) delivers his dialogue so naturally, you’d swear she’s making it up as she goes along.

Using the three-beep countdown of the PhotoBooth app as a kind of audio motif throughout, the film opens with Kayla recording a motivational YouTube video hardly anyone will watch. “The hard part of being yourself is that it’s not easy,” she stammers into her laptop camera, imploring people to “like” what she has to say, and signing off with a cutesy “Gucci!” catchphrase. When I was Kayla’s age, I poured most of my free time into publishing a newspaper nobody read. Today, kids (technically “teens,” since 13 is the first of those gloriously awkward years) chase YouTube and Instagram validation instead.

“Nobody uses Facebook anymore,” quips Kayla’s prettier, more popular classmate Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), whose birthday party falls just a few days shy of both girls’ middle-school graduation. “So my mom said to invite you, so this is me doing that,” writes Kennedy — voted “best eyes” by her classmates, though how could they have noticed, when her eyes are constantly glued to her smartphone? Kayla is equally obsessed with her devices, and the movie pretty much nails it when she gets up one morning, does her makeup, and then crawls back in to bed to take her first Snapchat selfie of the day.

“Eighth Grade” unfolds over those final days of that ignominious year, during which Kayla coaches her nonexistent YouTube subscribers on such skills as confidence and “putting yourself out there,” while wrestling to put her own advice into practice. At Kennedy’s party, she retreats to an empty room and plays with her phone, cutting her finger on her shattered iPhone screen — an ingenious visual metaphor for everything her generation is dealing with these days, and yet, wonderfully understated at the same time. Burnham doesn’t feel the need to veer off into ultra-dark Harmony Korine territory, an envelope that films such as Fien Troch’s “Home” and Catherine Hardwicke’s “Thirteen” have pushed clear off the table in recent years.

Though so much of “Eighth Grade” feels achingly honest, Burnham can’t help but fall back on a few of the stock coming-of-age-movie clichés: Kayla’s obsessed with a classmate named Aiden (Luke Prael), for whom the soundtrack swells and the world moves in slow-motion every time he appears, and she barely notices Gabe (Jake Ryan), the weird kid who wants more than naked selfies or a quick trip to third base from her. Like Dawn Wiener in Todd Solondz’s infinitely harsher “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” Kayla wants the validation of a cute guy’s attention. But it’s not like she’s going to marry either of these boys anyway.

Fisher has the unique challenge of making an average girl seem exceptional, tapping into that universally identifiable sense of vulnerability that shows plain as acne at that age. Somehow, Kayla escapes without a single person asking what she wants to be when she grows up (although an early montage shows her doodling googly-eyed anime characters into her spiral notebook and showing a certain aptitude in art class), and that’s one stress she can defer to next year, when she hits ninth grade. Middle school, as Burnham shows it, has changed a lot since most of us were there: Where previous generations learned to duck-and-cover in the event of a Russia-launched nuclear attack, these kids roll their eyes during a school-shooting drill.

Consider this: Neither Kayla nor Kennedy had been born yet when the movie “Mean Girls” was released, and they’re both entirely too self-absorbed to be proactively cruel to their classmates anyway. “Eighth Grade” isn’t about bullying; it’s about how hard we are on ourselves at that age. At one point, Kayla opens a shoebox time capsule she addressed “to the coolest girl in the world” two years earlier, and seems not to recognize the girl whose hopes and dreams it contains. It’s too bad she can’t send a message in the opposite direction, reassuring her insecure younger self that “It Gets Better.”

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (competing), Jan. 19, 2018. Running time: 93 MIN.

• Production: An A24 release. Producers: Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, Lila Yacoub, Christopher Storer.
• Crew: Director, writer: Bo Burnham. Camera (color): Andrew Wehde. Editor: Jennifer Lilly. Music: Anna Meredith.
• With: , Daniel Zolghadri, Fred Hechinger, Imani Lewis, Luke Prael, Catherine Oliviere. Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan

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Eighth Grade Is a Mesmerizing, Heartfelt Portrait of Teenhood

Bo Burnham’s debut movie delves into the life of an ordinary 13-year-old on the brink of her middle-school graduation.

As she’s getting ready for bed after a taxing day at school, Kayla (Elsie Fisher), the heroine of Bo Burnham’s wonderful new film Eighth Grade , shoos her dad away, posts up in her bed, and cracks open her laptop. With her face illuminated just by the glow of her MacBook, Kayla pores over that most dreadful and magical of places: the internet. As Enya’s “ Orinoco Flow ” kicks up on the soundtrack, Kayla scrolls through feeds, watches videos, and takes everything in, her expression that particular mix of hypnotized and bored that we can all adopt when we get sucked into a screen.

It’s tough to make movies about technology, youth culture, and the frightening limitlessness of a connected world without coming off as patronizing or out-of-touch. Burnham, a 27-year-old stand-up comedian who first emerged as a YouTube star in the early days of the website, is running headlong at those topics here with his debut film, and the results are resonant. His portrait of Kayla’s eighth-grade experience is as wrenching as it is sweetly funny, and in moments like her Enya-scored night of browsing, it can be at once mesmerizing and terrifying.

Kayla lives with her dad, Mark (a warm and charming Josh Hamilton), and she has a YouTube channel on which she delivers monologues about teen life and making friends, always signing off with the catchphrase “Gucci!” There’s a poignancy to these low-fi nuggets of empowerment she posts, even after the viewer realizes that Kayla’s middle-school life isn’t quite as sunny as her online persona. But who doesn’t dial things up a little on their social-media feeds? At no point does Eighth Grade seem aghast with Kayla’s excessive use of her phone or her laptop; Burnham understands the protective shell they’ve built around her, and how much that can help as much as hurt.

The film tries to understand, rather than judge, and it does that by centering firmly on Kayla. This isn’t an ensemble piece; the other characters at school and home revolve around her, even as they ignore her. How better to summarize the teenage experience? Everything that’s happening is happening to Kayla, including her shy and awkward interactions with the popular girls at school, or her encouraging visit to the new high school she’ll be attending, where she’s taken under the wing of a bubbly senior named Olivia (Emily Robinson).

Through everything, her dad does his best to reach her and remind her how great he thinks she is (just about the last thing Kayla wants to hear, of course). But the film doesn’t venture into afterschool-special territory. Burnham isn’t using his main character as a symbol of some larger crisis of teens broadcasting online—Kayla is almost intentionally inconspicuous, perhaps afraid to share her sillier or bolder thoughts for fear of coming off as weird. The rare occasions when they do breach the surface are a delight, offering evidence of the smart, fascinating person Kayla is surely on her way to becoming.

Although I’m quite a few years removed from being a teen, Burnham dramatizes moments so universal they had me squirming in my seat, grimacing in sympathy. At one point, Kayla attends a popular girl’s birthday party and sees her gift (a stodgier choice than others) opened in front of all the girl’s friends—an adolescent ceremony I recalled with horror. Some of what Burnham strikes upon here will ring true for most viewers, while other scenes (particularly the material connected to Kayla’s online interactions) speak directly to a newer generation.

I cannot fully vouch for Eighth Grade ’s realism, but the film never seemed to lean into the operatic awkwardness of a Todd Solondz movie, or the verbose emotionality of a John Hughes work. Burnham keeps his narrative low to the ground, and roots the audience in Fisher’s astonishing performance. She’s taciturn, but her eyes shimmer with excitement and hurt; her body language is always calibrated to her environment, be it curled up defensively at school, or grumpily slumped at home. Hamilton plays her dad not as a pillar of wisdom but as an encouraging, sometimes embarrassing pal who can be odd in his own way—very much his daughter’s father. It’s marvelous stuff, capped with a moving monologue near the end of the film.

But what most stunned me about Eighth Grade was how well directed it is. It’s rare that teen movies have the kind of visual acuity and verve that Burnham achieves here. I mentioned the “Orinoco Flow” scene because I was taken aback by how well it captured the sensation of plunging into the online realm. This is a film told with a strange sort of rhythm, one that had me discombobulated as I exited the theater. In tackling the experiences of a 13-year-old, Burnham gave himself a genuine challenge for his first movie. With Eighth Grade , he’s not only met that challenge but also set a high bar for every future attempt.

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With Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham gives the selfie generation the portrait it deserves

The popular YouTube comedian’s feature debut is an astonishingly sure-handed and sensitive tribute to the most awkward age.

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Three beeps, and then a grainy camera image of a young girl, her face looking suspiciously airbrushed. “Hey, guys!” she says. “It’s Kayla, back with another video!”

In a rambling monologue laced with “ums” and “likes,” Kayla (Elsie Fisher) explains that the topic of this video is “being yourself,” which “can be hard” because it’s “not very easy.” She concludes with her signature sign-off — a hand signal and a peppy, if slightly mystifying “Gucci!” — and reaches forward to turn off the camera on her computer.

In almost any other film this would be the start of a condescending scene, one that’s meant to expose the vapidity of the Kids These Days and poke fun, especially, at teenage girls. But Eighth Grade is not that film. It’s written and directed by Bo Burnham, the wildly popular YouTube comedian — that phrase alone may turn you off, but stick with me here — and it is a startlingly empathetic, wincingly honest, and always completely charming story of a girl living out the last week of her eighth grade year and coming to terms with herself, at least a little.

Eighth Grade lit up Sundance when it premiered there earlier this year; it’s the sort of film that makes anyone who’s already out of their teenage years grateful that they don’t have to live them now. A sensitive movie about growing up surrounded by cameras you’re operating yourself, it’s the sort of story that probably had to be made by a filmmaker who knows that terrain intimately.

But eighth grade is eighth grade, no matter what generation you’re in. And that means that Eighth Grade is for all of us.

Eighth Grade is a pitch-perfect, cringingly hilarious depiction of Generation Z

Today’s eighth graders aren’t millennials. Members of the ominously titled “Generation Z,” they’ve been using social media since they were kids (they don’t use Facebook, but are all over Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube) and are used to being both their own photographer and their own subject.

You could call them the “selfie” generation and make some facile analysis about narcissism, but that’s too easy. Everybody figures out who they are by watching how others react to them; that was just as true for our great-great grandparents as it is now. The difference is that those reactions have migrated to a more concrete form: likes, comments, and follows. You know exactly how many people think (or at least say they think) that you look good today, instead of trying to read it in their facial expressions, because Instagram will tell you. See me. Tell me I’m real.

That’s both terrifying and weirdly comforting, and it spills into real life. Eighth Grade captures well the feeling that everyone is looking at you and thinking about you, and the overwhelming desire to make yourself as attractive to their gaze as possible. Not necessarily sexually attractive — just cool enough to be liked by the people around you.

It’s not like adults don’t have that impulse. But for a lot of us it peaks right around age 13, which is also, unfortunately, when a lot of us are in peak awkward mode, just at the start of puberty.

Eighth Grade ’s Kayla is right there, too. She lives with her father (Mark Day), who raised her after her mother left, when Kayla was very young. Besides her YouTube channel, Kayla maintains an active, filter-heavy Instagram presence; we see her carefully applying makeup and doing her hair with the aid of YouTube tutorials (too real, amirite), then getting back into bed and snapping a “just woke up like this” picture to post before she heads to school.

The film tracks the last week of Kayla’s eighth grade year, a week that turns out to be important for her. The class “superlatives” are announced — Kayla is voted “most quiet,” to her chagrin. The kids receive time capsules they made for themselves at the beginning of sixth grade. Kayla goes to a pool party hosted by the class’s coolest girl, Kennedy. She shadows a high school student named Olivia (Emily Robinson) through an entire school day and panics over what to wear when she’s invited to go to the mall with Olivia’s friends. She thirsts mightily after her class’s heartthrob, Aiden (Luke Prael). And she tries, with all her might, to feel like the thing she’s always wanted to be: the “coolest girl in the world.”

Eighth Grade gets social media intuitively, and doesn’t take the easy road out

All these things seem trivial from an adult perspective, but when you’re 13 they matter so, so very much. Eighth Grade gets that. It’s a very funny movie, but the audience laughs are more laughs of painful recognition than derision. Of course it’s funny that Aiden is, in reality, a scrawny and not particularly interesting kid, but who doesn’t look back at their teenaged crush with a raised eyebrow? Yes, watching Kayla step reluctantly onto the pool deck in her one-piece bathing suit, surrounded by a sea of girls in bikinis, is cringe-inducing, but it’s also bound to provoke a chuckle from anyone who remembers what it felt like to feel that different from everyone else.

Like other recent and upcoming films — Ingrid Goes West , Skate Kitchen — Eighth Grade gently probes the anxieties that come with a world in which online presences bleed into reality, and vice versa. On Instagram you can crop and filter and control your image. And while you know you’re doing that, there’s an impulse to believe that nobody else is. Everyone else’s skin and house and life is as perfect as it’s presented. It’s only you who’s a mess.

Adults should theoretically be able to make that separation in a healthy and productive manner, but at 13, all bets are off. So while Kayla is immensely excited by any indication that she’s actually being treated like the version of herself she projects to the world, she knows that’s not really her, and it’s almost too much to bear.

But Eighth Grade doesn’t do the boring thing, condemning social media for causing the problem. It knows there’s an upside, too. We see how being behind her camera also helps Kayla see that she is someone who’s funny and smart and could maybe even be confident. Some of that practicing to be cool might eventually bleed out into her real life.

And so Eighth Grade gets something extremely right about not just the selfie generation, but what it is to grow up today. Burnham deftly, almost miraculously evokes the awkwardness, the anxiety, the fears, and the small joys that are littered along the road to adulthood. It’s not like Kayla’s problems are fixed by the end; even her loving father can’t just wave a hand and make things better.

But eighth grade is only a year long. High school holds its own joys and terrors. So does college. So does adulthood. We’re all just trying to be ourselves.

Eighth Grade opens in theaters on July 13.

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Summary Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school—the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year—before she begins high school.

Directed By : Bo Burnham

Written By : Bo Burnham

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Elsie Fisher

Josh Hamilton

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Eighth grade review: a masterpiece of middle-school horror, eighth grade masterfully captures the emotional horror of being a generation z middle-schooler, yet tells a universally relatable coming of age story..

One of the most painfully authentic cinematic portraits of life as a young teenager in recent memory (if not ever), Eighth Grade marks actor/filmmaker Bo Burnham's feature-length debut behind the camera. The movie has been generating enthusiastic buzz since its premiere at the 2018 Film Festival back in January, and with good reason. Eighth Grade cuts to the heart of just how emotionally unconformable adolescence can be with surgical precision, at the same time that it examines issues that are specific to life in the twenty-first century. The result is a film that manages to be charming, tender, funny, and squirmy-inducingly realistic all at once. Eighth Grade masterfully captures the emotional horror of being a Generation Z middle-schooler, yet tells a universally relatable coming of age story.

Elsie Fisher stars in Eighth Grade as Kayla Day, an eighth grader who has one week left of middle-school before she graduates. While Kayla spends much of her free time filming and posting videos where she offers motivational advice to YouTube, she tends to keep to herself in school - enough to be dubbed "Most Quiet" by her classmates - and struggles to make friends. Similarly, Kayla's dad Mark (Josh Hamilton) has a difficult time connecting with her at home, in no small part because Kayla would much rather focus on reaching out to people through social media than talk to Mark about her day to day life.

As Kayla prepares to leave middle-school behind her, she also makes an effort to finally climb out of her shell. However, whether attending popular girl Kennedy's (Catherine Oliviere) birthday party or talking to her crush Aiden (Luke Prael), nothing seems to go Kayla's way and she mostly winds up being horribly embarrassed. Nevertheless, Kayla doesn't give up and does her best to follow her own inspirational advice, for the first time.

Written and directed by Burnham, Eighth Grade is so effective at pulling viewers into a middle-schooler's mentality that it may leave adults wondering if they really stopped being their ungainly 13-14 year old self at heart and have merely been pretending otherwise, all these years. As much as Burnham deserves to be recognized for this achievement, Fisher (who voiced Agnes in Despicable Me 1&2 ) is equally worthy of praise for her performance in the film. Thanks to her work here, Kayla comes off as being convincingly aloof, anxious, and angry in ways that most onscreen teenagers simply are not. Naturally, this makes the character utterly endearing and, at the same time, lets the audience feel every emotional triumph and failure in her life as strongly as she does (no matter how small or insignificant they may be in the grander scheme of things).

Eighth Grade is further aided in its efforts to tap into Kayla's state of mind by Burnham's willingness to include every visceral detail of middle-school life imaginable, whether that means showing teachers' desperate efforts to seem "hip", having students engage in all sorts of uncouth behavior in the middle of class, or allowing everyone to look as ordinary as they would in the real world (complete with bad haircuts and facial acne). Burnham and his cinematographer Andrew Wehde further photograph everything with unfiltered texture, yet still manage to seamlessly integrate more stylized camerawork into the proceedings here. In general, Eighth Grade is surprisingly imaginative in its craftsmanship, especially when it comes to making the scenes where Kayla is interacting with others through social media feel cinematic. Anna Meredith's exuberant score is also worth singling out, seeing as it livens up much of the film and gives it more personality than it might have possessed otherwise.

Moreover, as much as Fisher is the star here, Eighth Grade 's supporting cast is essential to maintaining the film's sense of verisimilitude, in their own right. The young actors here are convincing across the board, including those in minor roles like Jake Ryan (playing Kennedy's cousin Gabe) or Emily Robinson as Olivia, the cheery high school whom Kayla shadows for a day. Meanwhile, on the grown-up side of the equation, Hamilton is similarly excellent as Mark. Indeed, his well-intentioned, but often clunky attempts to support Kayla throughout the film ring true, as do his (sometimes woefully) misguided stabs at starting a conversation with his daughter.

Refreshingly, Eighth Grade never abandons its brutally honest approach either, even when it takes increasingly dramatic turns (to give its narrative a more definite form) on the way to its ending. Similarly, the film takes a critical look at how teenagers use social media tools (like Snapchat filters) and how much time they spend on their phones, yet it's never preachy nor particularly interested in making a grand statement about how young people socialize in the digital era. Instead, Eighth Grade is more interested in observing how life online can be as alienating, enjoyable, or challenging as someone's day to day journey in the real world. Burnham's film very much breaks new ground by portraying Generation Z teenagers and their lifestyles in such an emphatic light.

Like The Edge of Seventeen and Lady Bird (to name a couple of better-known recent examples), Eighth Grade tells a captivating and insightful story about growing up from the perspective of a teenaged girl. At the same time, Burnham's film reflects the unpleasant reality of that life experience so meticulously that audiences may find themselves laughing and being utterly horrified in equal measures during any one scene. It's certainly not the most relaxed time one can have watching a movie, but it is a transfixing one. Some might even find it to be therapeutic in the way that it lets them confront any lingering trauma they have from their time as a middle-schooler. In a summer that has already been full of great indie films and Sundance veterans (see also Sorry to Bother You , Leave No Trace ), this is another must-see at the arthouse.

Eighth Grade is now playing in NY/LA and will expand to theaters across the U.S. over the coming weeks. It is 94 minutes long and is rated R for language and some sexual material.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

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‘Eighth Grade’ Review: Tender Take on Teen Angst Is Flat-Out Triumph

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

I’ve been talking and thinking about this fun-to-decode, impossible-to-forget gift from the cinema gods since I saw it at Sundance in January. Now Eighth Grade is going into wide release – and no excuses will be accepted for you missing it. First-time filmmaker Bo Burnham – the 27-year-old, comedy-and-music dude from YouTube – has taken the tiniest details in the life of a 13-year-old girl moving through the digital age, filtered them through his own madly inventive headspace, and created the kind of movie that leaves you laughing hysterically or fighting back tears, often simultaneously. It’s not a documentary, though it often feels like one.

Kayla, the eighth grader played by the astonishing Elsie Fisher, seems to be growing up – or fighting it – right before our eyes. (The young actor voiced young Agnes in the first two Despicable Me movies, but this is her breakthrough performance.) She wants so desperately to be cool that barely speaks at her middle school for fear of shattering the illusion; rather than earn her friends and popularity, it simply gets her voted “Most Silent” in the yearbook. Instead, Kayla makes YouTube videos that no one watches about how to be confident and put yourself out there. signing off the catchphrase “Gucci!” It’s a case study in adolescent awkwardness.

Burnham has a keen ear for teen-speak, however, and though Kayla barely reacts to a student drill about a potential school shooting, she’s alert to every slight inflicted by her peers – especially the hallway divas too self-absorbed to even bother being proper mean girls. When she snags a reluctant invite to a pool party thrown by the popular Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), you can feel her mortification at putting on a swimsuit; ditto being in proximity to the hunky Aiden (Luke Prael), who casually asks if Kayla is into blow jobs. The girl who’s never been kissed nods in the affirmative – then looks up what the phrase means on YouTube. Burnham doesn’t praise or demonize the Internet: It’s just there, a fact of every life, ready to measure human value through likes, shares, retweets and Snapchat judgements. And it’s how Kayla reacts to the world when her smartphone is temporarily (and scarily) out of reach that raises the bar for both the character and the film itself.

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At home, barely looking up when her single dad (a tender, terrific Josh Hamilton) tries to initiate conversation, Kayla is a slave to her devices. But when she visits the high school she’ll soon be attending, the young woman clicks with Olivia (Emily Robinson), a compassionate senior who helps her open up. The progress is interrupted by an incident in which Kayla finds herself alone in a car with one of Olivia’s friends, Riley (Daniel Zolghadri), an older boy who tries to intimidate her into taking her shirt off. The scene, which stops short of the cringe level you’ll find in the films of Harmony Korine and Todd Solondz, is nonetheless unnerving. You feel every rattling moment of it as Fisher, who 14 years old during filming, cuts to the core of adolescent agony. And in Kayla’s climactic scene with her father, her awkwardness becomes essential to human connection.

It’s stand-out sequences like their heart-to-heart – and the superb speech that Hamilton delivers during it – that make Eighth Grade is one of the best movies of the year. But mostly, it’s the empathy that Burnham invests in his characters that turns this coming-of-age movie into something special and unique. The comedian-turned-filmmaker has the wisdom to know that eighth grade isn’t a stage – it’s a state of mind most us never entirely grow out of. That’s why his movie feels both indelibly of the moment and achingly timeless. Gucci!

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Eighth Grade review: A simple story with the emotions of a cinematic epic

Bo burnham's directorial debut is led by an incredibly nuanced performance from newcomer elsie fisher, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Bo Burnham. Cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan. Cert: 15, 94 mins

It’s a rare and precious feeling when a film completely dismantles you. Eighth Grade – the directorial debut of US comedian Bo Burnham – breaks down every delusion we have about ourselves and burrows deep into those parts we’ve made such an effort to lock away. You may cry. You may shudder as every awkward social interaction that’s kept you up at night replays in your head all at once. You may feel the sharp pain associated with those moments when you feel completely isolated from the world. Burnham may have crafted a simple story about the most ordinary of teenage girls, but it speaks with the emotions of a true cinematic epic.

Elsie Fisher stars as 13-year-old Kayla, whose experiences aren’t brimming with conflict. We watch her navigate the last week of middle school, as she gradually confronts the fact that she’s failed to become the person she’d promised herself to be. There’s no boyfriend in the picture and no real friends to speak of. What she does have is a YouTube channel that no one watches and a crippling lack of self-confidence. Everyone around her keeps telling her that now is the time to be happy and carefree, but she’s too consumed by the knowledge that her reality doesn’t match up with her expectations.

It’s this gulf that forms the driving force behind anxiety – as the mind struggles to discern between what we think is true and what is actually true – and Eighth Grade is a film very much concerned with how controlling anxiety can be. “I’m always nervous,” Kayla confesses at one point. “I could be doing nothing, and I’m still nervous. It’s like that feeling before you ride a rollercoaster – that stupid butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling. Except that feeling you get after you ride the rollercoaster never comes.”

• With Eighth Grade, Hollywood is finally getting teenagers right

And so, she tries to escape that nervousness by perfecting a new Kayla – an online Kayla. We watch what is, essentially, performance art, as she scrolls through Instagram, liking and commenting on every post she comes across, despite never having the courage to speak to these people in real life. She snaps a hundred selfies to find the one acceptable combination that feels both flattering and effortless. Her YouTube persona doles out advice we’re not sure she actually believes in. “It’s not like I’m scared to not talk, I just don’t want to,” she assures us, but when we see her in conversation, she spurts out a few “yeahs” and frantic nods, while the panicked look in her eyes betrays her desperation to participate. Fisher communicates so much through her body language, freeing the script (also written by Burnham) from the need to ever explicitly tell us her state of mind. It’s an incredibly nuanced performance that suggests Fisher, whose previous credits include Despicable Me , has a bright future ahead of her.

While Eighth Grade ’s themes transcend Kayla’s own perspective (Burnham has spoken about the film existing out of a desire to channel his own experiences with anxiety), it’s also firmly grounded in the real world of today’s teenagers. Given Burnham's someone whose career first started on YouTube, it’s understandable he's expected to have some authority on the subject. But, in truth, as a 28-year-old, the internet he once knew is already worlds away from what exists today. Kayla discovers that even high-schoolers can barely comprehend what it’s like to have Snapchat when you’re 12 years old. It makes it all the more impressive that Eighth Grade boasts such impeccable attention to detail. In one scene, a kid yells out “LeBron James” – a niche joke from Vine, an old platform for short, looping videos – in the middle of an active shooter drill. The moment is a subtle, but surprisingly chilling snapshot of modern America.

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Burnham’s film is built around the experiences society has taught us to brush off as insignificant, despite the fact they can actually become the things that define us, for better or worse. Kayla’s dad (Josh Hamilton) wants only to be there for her, but since she refuses to believe she’s worthy of love, the two end up clashing. That in itself is a tragedy, compounded by the flashes of fear that interrupt Hamilton’s otherwise gentle demeanour. These moments are given their due spotlight, underlined by Anna Meredith’s clever score, that makes a collection of synths sound as huge and sweeping as an orchestra. In fact, it’s a little ironic that this film is being released in the UK in the same week as Avengers: Endgame , literally the most epic of imaginable releases. In Eighth Grade , having to walk out in your swimsuit at a middle-school pool party is just as a daunting as taking on supervillain Thanos himself.

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Eighth Grade review – adolescence is excruciating in finely observed gem

The directorial debut of comedian Bo Burnham is a wonderfully naturalistic tale of the end of middle school with a standout turn from Elsie Fisher

T he hellish horrors and swelling triumphs of being 13 are mostly brought to the screen with a detached gloss, the beats of cinematic adolescence rarely lining up with those experienced in real life. In Eighth Grade , comedian Bo Burnham’s wonderful directorial debut, there’s a refreshing avoidance of such artifice, the former YouTuber’s striking big-screen calling card playing out more like a documentary than a standard coming-of-age movie.

Words are stumbled over, teenage dialogue borders on inane and the performances are almost entirely naturalistic yet Burnham still guides his film with a distinctive, cinematic hand. It feels real without ever meandering, the work of a skilled curator showcasing his impressive knowledge of the teenage psyche.

Burnham’s co-author of sorts is Elsie Fisher, whose lead performance is as integral to the film’s success as his direction. She plays Kayla, a girl whose online presence as a confident, advice-spouting vlogger is wildly at odds with who she is at school: a loner who struggles to connect with those around her. It’s not through lack of trying, though, and in her final days of middle school, she’s determined to make progress with the girls who look down on her and the boys who don’t even look at her before moving on to a major new phase in her life.

The story of an awkward 13-year-old girl’s final days of middle school might seem like an odd fit for a male comedian’s directorial debut and at a time when we’re still seeing so many female narratives told through a male lens, it could appear as slightly regressive, especially after Greta Gerwig’s richly observed Lady Bird . But 27-year-old Burnham’s recent past as a viral teen star (since the age of 16, his videos have accrued more than 228m views), has gifted him with firsthand knowledge of what it is like to grow up online and there’s authenticity infused throughout.

For Kayla, access to social media allows her to feel superficially connected but being far removed from anything resembling a real social circle means that it can also feel frustrating, the possibility of popularity literally at her fingertips. There’s an acute awareness of the different roles played at that age, depending on the space. On YouTube, Kayla is confident and self-assured, at school she’s nervous and quiet and with her father, she’s irritable and rude. There’s nuance not just in Kayla’s characterization but also in the events that unfold around her.

For much of the film, there’s an excruciating focus on the difficulties she encounters, from an uncomfortable pool party to a queasily well-performed scene of harassment, but Burnham avoids an excess of cruelty. This isn’t Welcome to the Dollhouse. He peppers the film with rare, buoyant moments of joy that jump out that much further because they feel so deserved. At one point Kayla is befriended by an older girl, and I found myself as giddily excited as her, a relatively simple life event transformed into a crowd-pleasing victory.

Burnham often accompanies moments of extreme emotion, good and bad, with unexpected bursts of EDM, a decision that might sound intrusive but in practice is extremely effective. A bathroom outfit change suddenly evokes palm-sweating terror while Kayla glancing at her disaffected crush across the classroom is transformed into an earth-shaking awareness of attraction. It’s a nifty way of conveying the scale of events that might seem mundane on the surface and helps to tune us into Kayla’s wavelength for the duration. She’s in every scene and our intense investment in her day-to-day is down to a really quite exceptional performance from Fisher.

She’s not exactly an unknown (her previous credits include voice work in the Despicable Me franchise) but it feels like she’s an accidental discovery, as if this role was created for her. It’s an uncomfortably real turn, her social anxiety proving horribly familiar to anyone who’s felt out of place, and Burnham’s script never betrays her, refusing to resort to convention in the final act. He understands that victories are small, changes are slow and the future is uncertain and his defiance of expectation leads to a far more satisfying experience. Eighth Grade isn’t easy, both on screen and in life, but it’s a film that should be a rite of passage for all, no matter the age.

• Eighth Grade is released in the US on 13 July with a UK date yet to be announced
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Eighth Grade

Review by brian eggert july 24, 2018.

A recent surge of coming-of-age indie films has shifted the focus away from teenage boys and considered, for a change, the emotional confusion experienced by teenage girls with increasing resonance. Most recently in 2016, Kelly Fremon Craig adopted a John Hughes tone for her often hilarious, sometimes aching The Edge of Seventeen , featuring actress-turned-pop-star Hailee Steinfeld as a jumbled high-schooler. Last year’s Lady Bird found Saoirse Ronan performing in a confused, semi-autobiographical role for first-time helmer Greta Gerwig, capturing, in an idiosyncratic yet truthful style, that brief and puzzling transition from adolescence to adulthood. The honesty of both titles makes Juno , released in 2007 to wild approvals, look kitschy, absurd, and guarded by comparison. Those later films marked outstanding debuts for their female writer-directors, both brimming talents, and weighed the later years of teendom with emotional perspective and insight. Eighth Grade marks another sort of debut, diverting from these other teen stories not only in terms of its voice, but also its subject matter.

After all, high school is much more palatable than middle school (or, depending on your experience, junior high). Most high school teens, while hardly close to having their lives figured out, have moved beyond the growing pains of middle school—a period where the raging hormones and insecurity of later teen years is amplified to delirious extremes. An unforgiving social gauntlet in which every weakness is exploited and mocked, lack of confidence dominates everyday existence, and the human body makes a series of hairy and greasy maneuvers no living being—not even the most popular—could properly adjust to, middle school is a nightmare. Somehow, freshman writer-director Bo Burnham tackles this period of adolescence with the sensitivity and insight of someone sympathetic and acutely aware of their experiences from those years. And while accurately representing the vulnerability that everyone feels during that period of our lives, he engages the material with humor to acknowledge the absurdity of this age, but his empathy never subsides.

Though Eighth Grade is about today’s teenaged Generation Z, Burnham remains a prototypical Millennial voice, having earned his fame in his early twenties through comical music videos on YouTube. He’s since toured as a stand-up comedian whose stage routines involve elaborate, almost artistic performances, blending absurdist humor with music and a surprising rawness. His latest special on Netflix from 2016, titled Make Happy , features more than one reference to his disapproving father, as well as his conflicted relationship with his audience—his own disgust over his need for validation through his audience’s approval. Perhaps because of his origins on and relationship with social media and its inherent self-absorption, Burnham understands better than most how important acquiring likes and follows remain for the teenagers of today. That’s an essential component of life for Kayla (Elsie Fisher), the shy 13-year-old at the center of Burnham’s debut.

Kayla has bad posture and complexion, has no friends in school, and recently won her class award for “Most Shy”—but she’s trying. Every day, she sits before a webcam and makes videos for her underwhelming number of subscribers, talking about subjects such as “Putting Yourself Out There” with an authority she has not yet mastered. She desperately wants to feel socially accepted, although her awkwardness and inhibition seem to outweigh her longing to make friends or, further, obtain a boyfriend. Loud, intense electronic music cuts into the film’s score when she spies her crush (Luke Prael), a dreamy douche bag only interested in blowjobs and making squeaky fart sounds with his mouth. Kayla tries to engage, but she’s barely noticed by the elitist cool crowd she so admires. Still, she refuses to retreat into self-imposed isolation as a response to cold shoulders or her social anxiety. When Kayla is begrudgingly invited to the pool party of the middle school’s resident social butterfly and mean girl, she attends, even though she fumbles through almost every encounter.

A character like Kayla could have been a punching bag for another filmmaker, like Todd Solondz’s Dawn Weiner in the merciless Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996). Instead, Burnham ultimately delivers a sweet, understanding portrait of a particularly brutal and rejection-inflected period. He resists making his character too self-aware, so she never feels like a character written by an adult looking back on their own experiences. He directs naturalistic performances, especially from Fisher, whose primary experience has been voicing the fluffy-exclaiming Agnes from Despicable Me and its sequels. Fisher, behind her character’s crutch of vocalized pauses and resistance to eye contact, captures what it feels like to exist in an unwelcoming world and feel alone, and her tenderness, marked with bouts of rattled interactions and humiliation, occasionally brings the viewer to tears. Meanwhile, her single father, played with pitch-perfect confusion and blind supportiveness by Josh Hamilton, tries his best to lighten the evident burden on his daughter. However, Kayla seems determined to go it alone, assuring her father, “You don’t need to worry about me anymore.”

Burnham’s style of humor in Eighth Grade often relies on cringe-comedy, although never cruelly so, and not exclusively targeted against Kayla. Her father bears the brunt, such as a scene where Kayla asks him to help her burn something in the backyard. Cautious, he agrees, which is already an exceptionally supportive choice. When he finds out what they’re burning, contained within a shoebox, the moment becomes tragically funny. Although the humor sometimes places Kayla or her father at the center of a joke, they’re never the butt of the joke or mocked. That distinction is significant to maintain the film’s astounding balancing act between a coming-of-age comedy and a heartrendingly precise depiction of teenage insecurity. It allows Kayla’s inner life, however transitory and small in the grand scheme, to carry gravity. Still, Burnham’s observations of teenage behavior remain riotous and touching, such as Kayla’s first friend date with a boy, who serves her a classy dinner of chicken nuggets and fries with an (un)healthy variety of dipping sauces.

A streak of social and generational observation also comes through in Eighth Grade , as evidenced in a scene where Kayla shadows a high-school mentor, who later invites her to the mall. There, an older teen boy remarks that Kayla’s generation, though only four years apart, is “wired differently” because they were introduced to Snapchat in the fifth grade. Older viewers of Eighth Grade may have trouble relating to younger generations because their lives are seemingly defined by their smartphones and social media profiles. Such differences remain superficial, Burnham seems to argue. No matter your generation or gender, Kayla’s experiences throughout the film prove relatable. With perspective, the things that seem monumental in her life may be inconsequential later, but Burnham superbly puts the viewer in her world and reminds us that we, too, once writhed in our skin over the trivialities that overran our everyday existence. Another generational difference is presented with sobering matter-of-factness when Kayla’s class undergoes training on how to respond in the event of a school shooting, and the students treat their instruction with a saddening degree of normality.

Ridiculously, Eighth Grade has been rated R by the MPAA (for language and a sexual reference), meaning the audience on which it’s based cannot see the film without a parent. While parents may find watching the film with their teen child a tad uncomfortable, many children of this age will undoubtedly find much to identify with, and in a way, its catharsis may prove therapeutic. If you’re a parent, consider buying your teen a ticket and picking them up afterward; they’ll thank you for it. Whether you’re experiencing the woes of middle school now, or looking back from years later, incredulous and maybe still a little angry about the narrowly survived social hell and uncertainty during that stage of your life, Burnham offers a warm, emotionally vital snapshot of adolescence. Eighth Grade is one of those rare films that speaks to everyone, regardless of its subjective specificity, through universal life lessons that every person must learn and overcome before becoming an adult. It allows us to look at that age with humor and compassion, while putting equal weight on the absurdities and heartbreaking truths of eighth grade.

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Eighth Grade Review: A Heartfelt Debut

Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade is a poignant look at growing up in the internet age.

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Eighth Grade is a surprisingly poignant look at healing and growing up, focusing on a young woman who does so in the age of the internet. While there are certainly laughs, Eighth Grade and newcomer Elsie Fisher will break your heart with earnestness and the brutal anguish of teenage isolation.

Fisher, at only age 14, is so endearing that whatever you think when you first meet her catchphrase-spouting Gen Z YouTuber, you won’t be able to help yourself from cheering and crying right along by the film’s end.

In Bo Burnham’s feature-length directorial debut, we meet Kayla (Fisher) as she completes her final week of, you guessed it, eighth grade. (Full disclosure: Burnham and I met a few times when we participated in the same high school theater competition.) She and her father (Josh Hamilton) live alone, and in many ways the movie can be read as a tacit acknowledgment of the reality that there is a handbook for how to be a teen girl, and not everyone gets a copy. With no mom, older sister, or best friend, Kayla has been teaching herself under the guise of teaching others, covering topics like “how to be confident” and “how to get out of your comfort zone” on her YouTube channel. Over the course of the week, we watch Kayla reckon with classmates’ perception of her, squirm under her father’s unconditional love, and ultimately come to some sort of understanding about what it means to “be yourself,” as she calls it in the first video of hers that we see.

From the start, Eighth Grade makes clear that it deals in authentic teenagerdom. The actors are real teens, and they look and sound like it. Viewers might wince over the “likes” and “ums” in Kayla’s opening video, verbal tics with a gendered history that are often used as pop culture shorthand for vapid young women. But here the audience is meant to interrogate their own cruelty and eventually understand the need to cheer earnestness. Why did we laugh at Kayla, who’s just an awkward kid trying to do her best? Where does that impulse come from?

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The cute boy Kayla pines after is scrawny and weird, rather than brawn and poised. We only know that he’s the object of her affection because of her reaction and the music cue that plays when he comes on screen—he is otherwise indistinguishable from other pimple-faced kids on screen. Kayla’s own height was an excellent choice for a girl who mostly tries to be invisible, and we also see an eighth-grade boy dwarfed by their classmates when they visit the high school, both realities that rarely ends up on screen. And about those pimples: there are plenty of real ones to go around and braces too. No over the top headgear or acne-as-plot-device here, just the real day-to-day thing.

And these teens preoccupy themselves with authentically mundane kid behavior, like playing with their braces’ elastics, flipping their eyelids inside out, and that thing where you twist a water bottle until the cap pops off with a bang. This “younger generation” may have had snapchat since fifth grade, but they’re still kids, and that mostly means having friends, fighting with your parents, and being bored in class. This keen observational eye makes the world of Kayla’s middle school feel lived in, and even anonymous middle schoolers who are only on screen for a second feel incredibly well drawn.

Burnham, who also wrote the screenplay, shows a surprising amount of restraint and shocking insight into the lives of teenage girls. His script is almost as much a star as Elsie Fisher. Laughs are far sparser than one might guess from a comic with a couple of standup tours under his belt, but they serve the story well.  He goes for the better payoff of Kayla’s reaction to an instructional blow job video, rather than the cheap shot of showing the video itself. The comedic sensibility of Eighth Grade punctuates the stilted and the overly sincere of Kayla’s life. By nature narrative films are slower paced and with fewer punchlines than standup, but Eighth Grade is closer to a quiet indie than the laugh-a-minute punchline-delivery system from Burnham’s one-time mentor, Judd Apatow.

As a director, Burnham is passable but not nearly as stunning as he is a writer, though that’s admittedly a high bar. Perhaps his best choice here, other than casting the pitch perfect Elsie Fisher, is using actual screens and apps from real phones and computers, and that specific, lovely glow is worth it. So too is a clear understanding of how the platforms really work, unlike other writers and directors, who usually come across more like the movie’s off-kilter adults dabbing and claiming, “it’s gonna’ be lit!”

Curiously, however, Kayla goes on Tumblr and follows pop culture properties with serious fandoms, like Rick and Morty , Hamilton , the Harry Potter series (there’s a golden snitch keychain on her backpack), and Disney movies. She doesn’t appear to have any real community online. It seems unrealistic that she wouldn’t have found any friends that way—it’s much more common for young women to have a thriving community online, but no one they feel close to in their own town or school. It’s worth wondering if Burnham simply lacks the knowledge and experience to know that that would be the case.

Other than that misstep though it was a surprisingly successful portrayal of a time that feels so gendered. While everyone seems uncomfortable during middle school, there’s something about seeing the lines where Kayla’s ill-fitting bathing suit digs into her skin, or hearing a guy make sure he’ll wind up alone in a car with her, that is unique to the way girls go through this time, and it was captured astoundingly well here.

In many respects, Eighth Grade could be watched as a companion piece to Lady Bird . Both great films take seriously the daily trials of white suburban girls, centering their relationships with a parent and their own self-esteem rather than focusing on an idealized teen soulmate, or anything apocalyptic. The strength of Eighth Grade is that it makes us feel how high the (nominally low) stakes are to Kayla. Social isolation is real and painful and in middle school, everything feels dire. There’s plenty of discourse on how The Youth spend too much time with screens, but Eighth Grade is more interested in understanding Kayla’s story on her terms than judging it on someone else’s.

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4.5 out of 5

Delia Harrington | @deliamary

Delia Harrington a freelance writer and photographer focusing on social justice and pop culture through a feminist lens. She loves post-apocalyptic sci-fi, historical fiction, and feminist comic…

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Eighth Grade (2018)

April 26, 2019 by Matt Donato

Eighth Grade , 2018.

Directed by Bo Burnham. Starring Josh Hamilton, Daniel Zolghadri, Elsie Fisher, and Emily Robinson.

A teenager tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth-grade year before leaving to start high school.

Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade  earns a place at the kiddie’s table with Felix Thompson’s King Jack . Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ The Kings Of Summer . Harmony Korine’s Kids (delivery, not extreme content). Mature, relatable childhood stories voiced by age-appropriate players. A24 has found an inspired collaborator in Mr. Burnham, who painstakingly transports audiences back to their most knee-buckling adolescent memories. Tweeny actors reenacting your worst middle school memories. Never have I seen a more adorable, awkward and heartfelt film that made me want to cringe into oblivion in the best way possible. Reality smacks you hard, and bless Mr. Burnham for roll-calling every exorcised squirm to the front of the class. Age be damned.

Elsie Fisher stars as shy protagonist Kayla, who’s kept her head angled downward most of her pre-high school career. You wouldn’t peg Kayla a “Quietest Student” superlative winner by the “instructional” YouTube vlogs she records, but on-camera Kayla flaunts an altered personality. In person, she’s intimidated by the slightest form of social interaction – but that’s all going to change. Kayla makes it her mission to ditch comfort, climb social ladders and try to avoid being embarrassed by her father Mark (Josh Hamilton) as often as possible. You remember how hard it was being a kid, right? Get ready to relive all that angst and self-loathing once again.

Burnham deviates from his stand-up tactics but retains every bit of signature existential anxiety. His vision for Eighth Grade resonates how little children know about the world and the dwelling on small insignificances like apocalyptic doombringing. “Things get better,” we’re repeatedly reminded. That doesn’t diminish the severity and suffocation of interacting with a crush, wearing your one-piece to a bikini-filled pool party or doing something the popular clique might exploit (PTSD flashbacks to feeling so helplessly out of place). From dramatic failures like gifting an “uncool” birthday present to wearing off-brand of clothing that could instigate unsolicited mockery, it’s all here – so wonderfully amplified by a 13-ish-year-old’s unique position.

In line with Burnham’s desire to challenge his audience (no matter the medium), Eighth Grade does not shy away from hot-button topics or extreme discomfort. Maybe as theater classmates with bullet hole makeup aid in school shooting response training, maybe as high schooler Riley (Daniel Zolghadri) inappropriately urges “Truth Or Dare” with Kayla in his backseat. The latter a paralyzing reminder of what it means to feel helpless, wronged and apologetic over something that heaps blame on an innocent party (callbacks to consent, slut-shaming and more burn from the inside). When “kids being kids” becomes more about forcing a change to “norms” that shouldn’t be. Bless little miss Fisher as she sullenly diverts eye contact and sells the discomfort that fills every inch of dead air in Riley’s parked car. You’ll want to look away, and with good reason. That’s intended.

With no overstatement, I must profess how Fisher nails every pre-deep-sigh beat of this anxious paranoia bomb. Dialogue spaced between “ums” and “likes,” posture that of a girl struggling to pull strength from inside herself. She’s the child you immediately want to protect from the minute she’s shown daydreaming during a Sex Ed video (while a student masturbates in the darkened classroom next to her, drawn into his t-shirt like a turtle). Whether researching her first “how to perform oral sex” YouTube video or ogling basketball hottie Aiden while “too cool for school” music blares in the background (rom-com absurdity on an elementary level), it’s how each of these scenarios finishes that defines Fisher’s performance. An uttered compliment gone unheard, or a mortified glance when dad swings open her bedroom door, or utter defeat at the hand of zero confidence. Shameless youth, overblown ramifications.

The two most important relationships that define Kayla are with Josh Hamilton’s “lame” single dad and the young daughter’s iPhone. Hamilton portrays a new-gen father dealing with Friday night dinners where Kayla would rather double-tap Instagram photos than converse during mealtime. Mark’s parental representation is what gut-punch final scenes of warmth are made of – supportive and warm – but Burnham’s capturing of Kayla and her phone still takes center stage. The way cinematography twirls as Kayla assumes “Selfie Mode” frames technology and its user as a romantic drama might swirl around two lovers embracing. Phones prominently define every scene, most times as actors distractedly text or play mobile games. Devices become characters, more than just props. The radiating glow of screens a constant light source as Burnham captures how technology has shifted social developments while fathers like Mark must adapt to this new all-access, always plugged in lifestyle – and why that may or may not be a healthy switch.

Eighth Grade rides a nerve-chewing rollercoaster that repositions early stages of maturity and updates conversations based on what’s presently most important. A reshaping of how children interact (online, not in person) and the ability for young girls to feel empowered in their own skin. Remember: Burnham hasn’t cast older actors who’ve experienced further than their characters. There’s an honesty in every action and a sense that performers like Elsie Fisher are living out their lives with us peering in. Bo Burnham unpacks coming-of-age thorniness as a means of readdressing how we act while also bridging the gap between generations that are growing farther and farther out of touch. But most importantly? Eighth Grade is a testament to embracing one’s true self over filtered-and-staged to hell avatars worth nothing more than online “Likes” – no matter what some sneers-and-scoffs girl named Kennedy thinks.

Flickering Myth Rating –  Film: ★★★★ / Movie: ★★★★

Feel free to follow Matt Donato on Twitter ( @ DoNatoBomb ) – if you dare.

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Eighth Grade

• An introverted teenage girl tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth grade year before leaving to start high school.
• In his feature film directorial debut, comedian Bo Burnham deftly encapsulates the awkwardness, angst, self-loathing and reinvention that a teenage girl goes through on the cusp of high school. Given that the 27-year-old stand-up comic achieved fame as a teenager himself through YouTube by riffing on his insecurities, he is uniquely capable as the film's writer and director to tell the story of Kayla, an anxious girl navigating the final days of her eighth grade year, despite creating a protagonist female instead of male. Like Burnham did more than a decade ago, 13-year-old Kayla turns to YouTube to express herself, where she makes advice blogs in which she pretends to have it all together. In reality, Kayla is sullen and silent around her single father and her peers at school, carrying out most of her interactions with her classmates on Instagram and Twitter. Her YouTube videos are a clever narrative tool that provide insight into her inner hopes and dreams, much like an inspirational online diary. One of Eighth Grade's biggest triumphs is in its realism.
• Kayla Day is an eighth grade student finishing her final week at a public middle school in the state of New York. She posts motivational videos on YouTube about confidence and self-image that get almost no views. Struggling to make friends at school, she wins the "Most Quiet" award from her classmates. Meanwhile, Mark, her single father, struggles to connect with her and break her reliance on social media. She is invited to a pool party hosted by a classmate, Kennedy, who has done so only after being forced by her mother. At the party, Kayla has an anxiety attack in the bathroom but eventually goes outside to swim, where she meets Gabe, Kennedy's eccentric cousin. After trying to leave the party, Kayla has an awkward encounter with her crush, Aiden, who suggests that she rejoin the group. She overcomes her fear and volunteers to sing karaoke.
• Kayla Day is an eighth-grader in her final week of middle school in White Plains, New York. She posts motivational videos on YouTube about confidence and self-image that get almost no views, while struggling at school to make friends, and winning the "Most Quiet" award from her classmates. Mark, her single father, struggles to connect with her and break her reliance on social media. Kayla gets an invite to go to a pool party hosted by a classmate, Kennedy, who has invited her only because her mother forced her to. Kayla has an anxiety attack in the bathroom, but eventually goes outside to swim, where she meets Gabe, Kennedy's cousin. Kayla later has an awkward encounter with her crush, Aiden, who suggests that she rejoin the group. She overcomes her fear and volunteers to sing karaoke. Kayla overhears that Aiden broke up with his last girlfriend because she refused to send him nude photos. Kayla mentions to him in passing that she has a dirty photos folder on her phone, which piques his interest. He asks if she gives blowjobs, and she says yes, not knowing what it means. She later looks it up online and, although disgusted, attempts to practice on a banana. Her dad walks in before she can try it, and calls her bluff by reminding her that she doesn't like bananas. Kayla attends a high school shadow program, where she meets Olivia, a senior who immediately takes a liking to her. Olivia gives Kayla her number. Kayla calls her later in the day to thank her for showing her around the high school. Olivia reassures Kayla that middle school is messy and to not worry so much about what her peers think of her. She then invites her to hang out at the Palisades Center Mall with some of her friends. They have a good time, though Kayla spots Mark spying from afar and, embarrassed, tells him to leave. Olivia's friend Riley gives Kayla a ride home late at night, and he initiates an awkward game of truth or dare where he asks about her sexual experience, takes off his shirt, and asks her to remove hers. She refuses and he angrily backs off, claiming he was just trying to help her get some experience with boys. Kayla breaks down at home and is comforted by her father. She makes a video announcing that she intends to stop making videos, as she feels unfit to give advice when she is not even able to follow her own. Kayla opens a time capsule she created for herself in sixth grade. She watches a video she made for herself, where her past self asks questions about Kayla's friends and love life. She asks her dad to help her burn the time capsule and asks if she makes him sad. He says that she fills him with pride and he could never be sad about her, which relieves her. At graduation, Kayla rebukes Kennedy for ignoring her thank-you letter and acting indifferent towards her despite Kayla's attempts to be nice. She later hangs out at Gabe's house and they have a fun time together. Kayla makes a new time capsule which she and her father bury in the backyard; she leaves a video message for her high school self encouraging her to persevere through tough times.

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