EIGHTH GRADE

Eighth Grade manages to stand apart from the rest by not only focusing on a time which has been oddly overlooked in these kinds of films which tend to mainly focus on high school. But also, by being brutally, cringe worthy and honest about the pimple faced awkward nightmare that time was. 

This film marks the directorial debut of Bo Burnham, one of YouTube's original teen stars who have become famous for his music and commentary. has as given us an agonizingly rich and authentic look at what life is like for Kayla (Elsie Fisher), a shy 13-year-old girl in today's social media obsessed world. Burnham, doesn't spare any detail and doesn't alter any truth. A lot of the film has a very uncomfortable awkward feel to it and it works perfectly in conveying what that time was like for most kids. It doesn't sugarcoat anything or try to meet our expectations. It shows middle school for what it is. 

This earnest storytelling is refreshing in an era of coming of age stories which focus more on evoking cheap feels through the use of pretty actors and emotionally manipulative music.

Kayla, like so many kids her age, is a shy girl pretending to be confident. The film puts a lot of focus on the use of social media which could easily be cringe as many films fail to portray this properly but surprisingly the film does it well. She posts advice videos to YouTube on how to be yourself, something with which she still very much struggles. As she records one video, she slowly rolls her chair farther away from the camera, indicating a declining level of self-assurance. This mirrors her real-world peer interactions, in which she stammers and laughs halfway through sentences as she begins to doubt herself and shrink with embarrassment, not that the self-absorbed "listener" bothers to notice.

I don't know many of these actors, but they do a great job. Elsie Fisher captures the innocence, vulnerability and even aggressiveness of kids her age perfectly. Her dad (played brilliantly by Josh Hamilton) brings out the struggle parents have to go through at this point in their kids' development. He doesn't have all the answers, but he keeps trying.

Overall there's very little I don't like about the film. I feel the film is shot standard. Like I get it was going for an almost documentary type feel and that it's Bo's first film, but it never looked like it wasn't amateurishly shot. I've seen quite a few first-time directors end up making some interesting visuals in their films. I also find it odd that Bo didn't write any songs for the film.

Those are pretty minor issues and overall the film is pretty fantastic, and I'd strongly recommend you see it.