Eighth Grade

(2018)

★ 7.1 IMDb · 1,712 votes

Genres: Comedy, Drama

Year: 2018

Runtime: 94 мин

Country: United States of America

Director: Бо Бёрнэм

Cast: Элси Фишер, Джош Хэмилтон, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan, Дэниэл Золгадри, Fred Hechinger, Imani Lewis, Luke Prael, Catherine Oliviere, Nora Mullins

Plot

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.

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.