You may know him from that unorthodox comedy special on Netflix your friend showed you in 2013 or maybe from YouTube in 2008, but now in 2018, Bo Burnham has delivered high-quality content again. This time it is in the form of my favorite movie this year, Eighth Grade, a comedy/drama coming-of-age film like no other I have seen before. If you’re looking for a chance to relive all of the awkwardness that comes with being in middle school, then this is the movie for you. Eighth Grade follows 13-year-old Kayla (played by Elsie Fisher) and her last few adventures in middle school leading up to graduation. From attending a popular girl’s birthday party, shadowing and eventually befriending a high school student, experiencing an extremely uncomfortable and dangerous car ride home with a boy, and finally wrapping up with graduation, Kayla had an intense last few days of middle school.
Kayla participates in the main thing you would expect all adolescents to participate in nowadays: social media. Bo Burnham never misses an opportunity to showcase middle schoolers’ obsession with technology, which usually includes shots of their eyes glued to some kind of screen. Kayla is reserved, but goes out of her way to portray the antithesis of her considerably introverted character by producing unpopular YouTube vlogs. Her vlogs are self-improvement tutorial-like videos where she explains to her viewers concepts like “how to put yourself out there” and “how to be confident,” all of which are directly reflective of the events happening to her. We, as the audience, experience her vlogs exclusively through a computer screen except for one vlog where she tells her viewers that she will no longer be making videos. In this moment, we see Kayla’s face not through a screen, but from behind her laptop, which communicates to the audience that she is being legitimate and not her on-screen persona.
Director Bo Burnham employs a number of satisfying tactics, such as dropping the score and letting the camera linger for the entirety of strongly awkward moments, having the film open and close with the same shot of Kayla’s eyes seen through a laptop screen, and utilizing immensely entertaining and accurate dialogue. The adults in this film are seen attempting to fit in, using outdated language such as “lit” and now unpopular actions such as dabbing. Throughout the film, Kayla’s dad actively attempts to check in and begin a personal conversation with Kayla, which she puts off until towards the end of the film during a beautiful moment of reflection and self-awareness when Kayla asks her dad, “Do I make you sad?” Kayla goes on to describe anxiety in an innocent and accurate manner: “I’m nervous, like I’m waiting in line for a roller coaster. I never get the feeling of after you ride the roller coaster.” There is something for everyone in this film. Simply describing it as an accurate depiction of a day in the life of a 13-year-old would be an understatement. I am sure that you, just like me, will be talking about this film for many years to come.
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