Eighth Grade (2019)

“I never get the feeling of after the rollercoaster.”

Eighth Grade is a film that I wish I’d had when I was in secondary school and for anyone lucky – or unlucky, depending on your perspective – growing up as a Gen Z’er and who feels particularly alone and unsure of who exactly the hell they are and just want to start becoming whomever they’ll be one day, then you owe it to yourself to watch Eighth Grade.

I’ve held Bo Burnham in high esteem for some time. I’m ages with him and I grew up watching his YouTube videos – which I often watched to make me laugh when I was feeling particularly alone. As a result, I went into Eighth Grade with relatively high expectations, all of which were exceeded by a wide margin.

I’m always sceptical of films that deal with mental health issues (Silver Linings Playbook is trash and I will always stand by that), but Burnham, as is to be expected due to his own experiences with the condition, manages to portray to an almost uncomfortable degree what it is to experience anxiety. By this I don’t mean that feeling of anxiety everyone gets before a job interview, but what it is to exist with a gentle, horrible thrum of nervousness that infiltrates every aspect of your life.

This is through simple things such as Burnham’s choice to embrace what would be considered ‘wasted words’ in any other film, this being the almost constant use of what I’ll shorten to “um-but-like”. It could be argued that this is simply an accurate portrayal of teenage vernacular, and that’s certainly the case, but it’s a beautifully subtle way of highlighting the perpetual cycle of self-doubt and double-thought that Kayla is in.

Burnham’s camerawork highlights this. In particular, a moment that hit home pretty hard for me is when Burnham’s indie-style handycam begins to rattle more and more violently around a cramped bathroom as a low-frequency hum grows in volume as Kayla’s breathing becomes increasingly laboured and she becomes visibly, increasingly distressed. Another standout moment is at a pool party where, what should be a joyful occasion, is reduced to something out of a Hitchcock film thanks to liberal use of slo-mo, images of a girl doing a crab walk and ear bursting strings piercing through the reverberated, overwhelming chatter.

Of course, the glue holding it all together through her tiny, almost imperceptible, gestures is the performance of Elsie Fisher, who, if there’s any justice, will be one of the biggest stars of her generation. There were a number of moments that I clutched my face – and teared up, I’ll admit – at what was happening to Kayla, simply because it was so close to the bone and so very, very real. Her mumbled, inaudible words as she tries to get a word in during a conversation before thinking better of it. Her inability to look up from the floor whilst having a conversation, for fear of confirming that she really is being sneered at with as much contempt as she’s assumed. The way she frantically paces back and forth, practicing how to answer the phone to her new friend for the first time. And, my god, is there anything more relatable and adorable, and heart breaking than someone trying to play the cymbals quietly and inconspicuously?

One of the things that Eighth Grade gets right, and that Burnham clearly made a point of being especially careful about, is its treatment of social media. It’s made abundantly clear that this is not a film about social media, it is simply a film set during the social media age. It in no way moralises and doesn’t try to suggest that social media is a hindrance to Kayla, or her peers, but just…a thing that exists.

Eighth Grade is a film that succeeds on innumerable levels, but more than anything it succeeds in telling the tale of a young girl who feels desperately alone and, on some level, truly struggles simply to exist. The last thing we hear Kayla say, in a video to her future self, is this: “I can’t wait to be you.” But, as I’m sure many of you are as well, I’m still waiting to become me, and I can’t wait either.

Director: Bo Burnham
Writer: Bo Burnham
Stars: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson