Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #266: Eighth Grade (2018).

 

Kayla (Elsie Fisher) is 13. She lives with her single father Mark (Josh Hamilton) and, like most of her teenage peers, spends most of her time behind a screen; she even actually makes YouTube vlogs in which she portrays herself as a motivational influencer. At school she's a pariah and she knows it, with this being the primary source of her insecurity and angst. But when the last week of eighth grade rolls around, Kayla sets out to finally acquire acceptance from her classmates. Meanwhile, domestically she and her father, who resents her efforts to exclude him from her activities, try to find common ground.

This filmmaking debut from comedian Bo Burnham, himself a former YouTuber (and I loved watching his videos), is nothing ambitious or (entirely) original, but it's not really meant to be either of those qualities anyhow. What it is meant to be (and manages to be) is a frank but tender exploration of growing up in the social media age, with the pitfalls that has imposed particularly on children and teens. Kayla and most of her peers share virtually all their thoughts online and one scene even hints at the posting and sharing of their sexually explicit images. I suspect Burnham added this criticism of social media because he's admitted to abandoning his YouTube career after becoming disillusioned with the website, but he makes this condemnation in a smart and and sincere manner of emphasising how social media platforms tend to deliberately prey on the young and vulnerable. By contrast, he treats them here with obvious concern and his screenplay also doesn't have them talking unrealistically eloquently like too many teen movies do.

Fisher, leading a mostly non-professional teenage cast, is effective and beautifully understated as Kayla, and Anna Meredith's largely electronic score is fitting because it sounds at least to me very much like the kind of music currently in vogue. I found some of the supporting characters, namely the handful of kids who ultimately befriend Kayla, to be slightly underdeveloped, and the climax to be rather formulaic, but nonetheless I overall consider Eighth Grade a wise, astute and empathetic directorial debut, and despite being a male millennial I noticed a lot of similarities between Kayla and my 13-year-old self. 8/10.