In fact, even now as I find myself nearing forty and quickly devolving into a physical wreck, you could not convince me to go back to middle school again if you paid me. Hopefully my daughter and I never find ourselves living out one of those Freaky Friday scenarios. If we have to be in a Disney classic later remade with Lindsay Lohan, I vote for The Parent Trap. I’ve always wanted an identical twin. I could have used one back in eighth grade, so I didn’t have to start another new school, terrified and alone.
What an intense, awkward, uncomfortable, torturous time of life! And Bo Burnam’s film captures it all perfectly. In fact, the film so realistically presents the interior life of a shy, self-conscious eighth grade girl that I’m rather stunned that it was written by a man. Burnham must have some muse, or maybe he’s just tapping into a primal experience of adolescence all humans share. In fact, I’m sure that men can empathize with Kayla’s awkwardness, too. Anyone can. If you don’t go into Eighth Grade understanding what it’s like to be an awkward thirteen-year-old, then you’ll definitely get it by the time you leave. The movie is so good at recreating the eighth grade experience. It looks artless, natural.
The Good:
Part of the reason for Eighth Grade‘s compelling realism is definitely Elsie Fisher’s fantastic performance. She gives so much and withholds so little that the film almost seems like a documentary. Of course, writer/director Burnham deserves some credit, too. He takes such care to show us what Kayla sees (and what she doesn’t). By the end, we’ve been so immersed in her point of view for an hour and a half that we feel like we’ve met a real girl, one a lot like us, in fact.
Even though the film is rated R (probably because it touches on sexting and blow job tutorials), my husband and I agreed that it’s something our daughter could relate to and would probably benefit from watching. She’s only nine, but she’s already a big fan of several YouTubers and always excited when our own YouTube channel gets another subscriber (which baffles me because I see it as a place to store our family videos so we can watch them later).
Do we really want to expose our daughter to the R-rated material in this movie? Well, that’s an illusory choice. Whether she watches this movie or not, she’s (unfortunately) one-hundred percent likely to be exposed to the trials and pitfalls of adolescence as she continues to age. I feel a little stressed knowing that soon she won’t be able to get by without wearing a bra (which she already has but dislikes). She’ll probably get even more self-conscious about her appearance than she already is. The girls will get meaner. The boys will get social media. And by the time she starts middle school, boys will almost certainly be pressuring girls to send them nudes or give them sexual favors.
The movie replicates early adolescence with amazing authenticity. The emphasis on social media in Kayla’s life struck a chord with me since headphones and the glow of blue light shining up on a young face are familiar sights in our house these days. I find it fascinating how quickly Facebook has become the social media platform that “nobody uses.” Our fifteen-year-old son tells us this all the time when suggesting I get Instagram (which, of course, is owned by Facebook). Snapchat is also popular with him, but he hasn’t suggested I get that.
Back in my day, social media was not a thing. But eighth-grade me did wear Walkman headphones to drown out reality as much as possible. And I wish I’d had a phone to be looking at to avoid painful social interactions in school. As it was, I carried a paperback dictionary and took up “reading” it to look engaged when isolated and to avoid making eye contact. This habit became so ingrained that I started actually reading the dictionary whenever there was downtime. When my grandpa accidentally arrived at the middle school to drop me off too early (for my liking), I opted to wait in the car and automatically reverted to my time filling strategy.
“What are you reading?” he asked me.
“Just the dictionary,” I replied.
“Well that makes me feel real good!” he said. “You’d rather read the dictionary than talk to me!”
I think those who keep complaining that social media is destroying young people’s ability to interact in real life are deeply confused. If anything, social media is masking an existing deficit. Kayla isn’t online so much that she’s damaged her social life. She’s online so much because she craves social interaction that she doesn’t have the skills to make happen in the real world. Before the internet, the social awkwardness of thirteen-year-olds still existed (just ask my slighted grandpa). When Kennedy stares down at her phone instead of talking politely with Kayla, removing the phone would not make the interaction more pleasant. Shunning is not an activity that requires a cell phone. Teens answering in monosyllables at the family dinner table is similarly low tech. Taciturn kids ignoring their exasperating parents is nothing new.
Eighth Grade uses technology in really smart ways. Kayla’s YouTube videos are a wonderful narrative device for giving us insight into who she is and the person she wants to be. They give a shy girl an outlet for self-expression, and, as we eventually learn, someone is listening. (Surely her father is secretly watching them, too, since she doesn’t exactly give him a lot of other clues about what’s going on in her life.) The powerful visual metaphor of Kayla’s cracked phone screen is a catalyst that sets the key events of the story in motion.
Best Scene Visually:
Eighth Grade is quite inventive in what it chooses not to show us. I like the way that we are deliberately not shown things all the time (the cake at the birthday party, for instance, or the “weird” face Kayla’s dad is making in the car). This technique pointedly emphasizes the human gaze. When present in a situation, we wouldn’t actually see everything (especially if, like Kayla, we were often looking down), so this myopic visual style makes us feel present in the scenes ourselves, like we are actually experiencing the events of the movie right along with its tortured (and extremely sympathetic) protagonist.
I love the way that Kayla creates a (metaphorical) curtain to keep her father out. She closes herself off to the point that we physically feel the separation, even when they are sitting together at the table or in the car.
One of my favorite moments in the movie comes when she sits in a photo booth for the sole purpose of separating herself from him. She literally draws a curtain between the two of them, and he peeks in a tiny bit from outside. In that image, we see the entire relationship in miniature. (It’s also reminiscent of his usual posture when he speaks to her through the crack of her bedroom door.) This pointed, literal curtain actually made me smile.
For parents, the movie is doubly rewarding because it’s pretty easy to identify with and feel for both the daughter and the father. Being thirteen isn’t easy, and neither is being the parent of a thirteen-year-old.
Josh Hamilton makes Kayla’s dad such a likable figure, by the way. I’m sure most parents can relate. My husband definitely felt a camaraderie with him.
Best Action Sequence:
The game of truth or dare in the back of the car is so painful to watch. As soon as Olivia (played by the perfectly cast Emily Robinson) left the car, my husband and I began cringing. The movie could take a very dark turn here, so the audience probably feels a sensation of relief at the end. But I love the way the encounter is framed for Kayla by her driver. This feels so realistic and so much like being a teenager. One minute, you’re having the best and most exhilarating night of your life. It’s a social triumph. Your heart is swelling. You’re happy. It’s a high you’ll remember forever. And the next, something absolutely awful happens to spoil your whole night completely. To me, this was an authentic slice of the teenage emotional experience.
This could have turned into something much worse, but what does end up happening is something far, far, far more common. When you’re a teenage girl, things like this are constantly happening to somebody (you, friends, acquaintances). And I’m sure the Olivia character would be genuinely shocked to learn about it. This felt incredibly realistic.
Best Scene:
Two scenes stand apart from the others to me.
The bonfire begins with bleak humor (not intended as humor by Kayla but extremely funny to the audience and alarming for the dad). Then it turns into a truly heart-warming moment, and a great speech by Josh Hamilton that would be a Best Supporting Actor clip in a fall movie.
The scene by the fire is powerful, but for me, the very best part of the movie is the pool party sequence. I so identified with every moment of this awkward experience. (Why do adults always assume that all kids are friends and want to hang out together? This makes absolutely no sense. Nobody ever says, “Hey! You’re forty-three! So is Bob. You two are bound to hit it off!”)
The pool party sequence is like a mini-version of the entire movie (especially because Kayla video narrates her way in and out of the experience). We get everything the movie offers us, all techniques, themes, strengths, weaknesses. If budget constraints had forced Burnham to make a short instead of a feature length film, he could have made his point by giving us this pool party sequence alone.
Funniest Scene:
I was extremely fond of the delicious awkwardness of all those McNugget sauces. The banana scene is a real scream, too. As is “the creepy guy watching us” moment (which seemed all too familiar to me). Kennedy’s mom looking around for Kayla’s dad is kind of amusing (and very telling), too.
Eighth Grade is actually full of humor, but it’s usually the kind born of awkwardness, mostly the kind that would make the actual teenager experiencing it scream, “OMG! That’s not funny!” But it is kind of funny.
The Negatives:
This is a movie that replicates the experience of teen angst that many of us lived. You’re thirteen. Everybody else has perfect make-up and flawless hair, but your face is breaking out. Everybody is staring at you. Your dad will not stop embarrassing you. At home, he is constantly bothering you, interrupting your thoughts. In public, he is always doing embarrassing things that call attention to you. This movie is about being someone surviving the last week of eighth grade, and it really makes you remember what being in eighth grade is like.
But that’s all it does.
So what I’m calling a negative here is actually just a limitation. Since this is an everyman (in this case, everygirl) experience of being thirteen, it obviously can’t be anything else, or it will fail at the goal of being what it is.
So we get an inside view of a typical eighth grader’s life. But it can’t ever branch out into pointed specificity or wild imagination. The truth or dare scene could end up much darker than it does, but that would change the nature of the movie. The goal is to stay closest to an experience with which everyone can identify, so there can’t be too many deviating particulars.
Towards the end of the movie, I started thinking, “I wonder what happened to her mother.” If it were a different kind of movie, we’d learn a big secret about her mother near the end of the film, but this is the kind of movie that doesn’t have big secrets or shocking plot twists. The story is about what it’s like to be a typical eighth grader. Any plot twists, and you’d suddenly have a very particular eighth grader. And Kayla is not supposed to be somebody. She’s supposed to be anybody, everybody.
So if you’re looking for a film of another genre–more of a popcorn flick, a blockbuster–you may be disappointed by Eighth Grade. The performers are actors, and this is fiction, but the project could probably also have worked as a documentary (with the right lead). You feel like you’re watching one slice of the real life of a typical American girl. So if you’re expecting something to happen, it won’t. This isn’t that kind of movie.
Overall:
