‘Eighth Grade’ Is a Genuine Discovery That Deals Out Cringe Moments and Kindness

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MOVIE: Eighth Grade
DIRECTOR: Bo Burnham
CAST: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan
AVAILABLE ON: Prime Video and iTunes

The big question on everybody’s mind once they walk out of Eighth Grade is “How?” How did writer/director Bo Burnham write a movie about an 8th grade girl going through a crisis of confidence with such lived-in verisimilitude. Granted, I can’t come at this angle with any kind of firsthand experience either, but there is something universally recognizable in Kayla, the vlog-making, dad-ignoring, friendship-starved tween played with sometimes-excruciating open-heartedness by Elsie Fisher. (And if there have been critiques that Burnham has gotten the experience wrong, I haven’t heard them.)

Fisher’s Kayla would be a fascinating creature to observe even from a distance. We’re introduced to her via her daily vlog, where she dispenses helpful advice to girls her age about things like confidence, friendships, ambition. Her delivery is so every-teen realistic, it’s easy to mistake her assured persona for the real thing. It’s not. Her days in school involve her staying mostly quiet, observing the other, more easily social kids. The popular girls and the aloof boys they gravitate towards. The social politics and social media that dominate their lives. Kayla, as many grade-schoolers have before her (hello!), tries to make her way in with kindness and confidence. Make as few waves as possible, but make sure those waves are complimentary. For anyone who’s ever been this girl, known this girl, or felt like they were furiously covering up the version of this girl who lived (lives?) deep inside their core, Eighth Grade is giving you documentary-level realness. In other words, it can be horrifying.

Applying the salve to that horror are the performances of Fisher as Kayla and the great Josh Hamilton (a venerable character actor who IMDb seems to think you know best from Alive, Frances Ha, and the movie about Harvard students learning life lessons from a homeless Joe Pesci, With Honors) as Kayla’s single dad. At home is where Kayla does not have to keep up the air of hopeful friendliness, so it’s where she dumps all her frustrations out on her dad. Not a single breath or nonverbal cue out of this man earns anything but an exasperated sigh. He loves this girl so much, he’s smart enough to know she’s not one of the popular girls, but he’s fully unable to offer anything in the way of help beyond assuring her over and over again what a great kid she is. And she hates it.

It’s easy to imagine you know where Eighth Grade goes from here. Cringe-inducing attempts to befriend the cool girls. Traumatizing false starts with boys. The kinds of moments you’re still replaying in the recesses of your subconscious 20 and 30 years later. And while that’s all there, Burnham is clever and kind enough to know that these moments aren’t the whole story. Kayla gets a peek into high school life — is it salvation or just a brand new playing field for humiliation? Or does the truth lie in an in-between that’s … both? The wisest moments of Eighth Grade are when silent grade-school mortification gives way to hyper-expressive teenage experience in a way that’s … good and bad. It’s less about us worrying whether Kayla will be okay in another four years than it is about Kayla knowing that she has a role to play in those next four years.

Eighth Grade is the kind of movie that makes you feel like you’ve stumbled onto buried treasure, not just in the talent displayed by Fisher and Burnham but in the focus on a kind of character who is so often abandoned for lack of understanding. We understand precocious kids like in The Florida Project. We understand Mean Girls. We may not know what there is to understand about skater punks but damned if we don’t keep trying. But that girl in class who’s voted Most Quiet, who gets invited to the pool party out of obligation, who clams up when you ask her what’s bothering her. That’s not a character we get to know very often. Eighth Grade is a miraculous exception.

Where to stream Eighth Grade