Eighth Grade

Full review: https://www.tinakakadelis.com/beyond-the-cinerama-dome/2021/12/28/its-brutal-out-here-eighth-gradenbspreview Internet comedian and humorous songwriter Bo Burnham in the role of writer and director of a movie about an eighth-grade girl sounds, on the surface, like quite a mismatch. What could Burnham know about the very specific horrors of being a thirteen-year-old girl in the internet age? It turns out that Burnham was the perfect person for the job. _Eighth Grade_ is both a comedy and a horror film. It’s an honest exploration of the anxiety of middle school and the out-of-body experience that is puberty. Burnham based the main character, Kayla (Elsie Fisher), on his own experiences with panic attacks and anxiety. He has explained that those feelings of anxiety remind him of the terrors of his own middle school experience.

Elsie Fisher turns in a strong performance here as the teenage “Kayla” coming to terms with all of those uncertainties we all feel as puberty beckons. Coupled with her own personal issues, she’s in her last year of what could loosely be referred to a children’s school and is maybe just a little over-reliant on validation from social media to get her through her days. There’s no mum on the horizon, but her dad (Josh Hamilton) - who seems to spend a fair amount of time appearing in her bedroom doorway at night whilst she is surfing the internet, cares deeply for his daughter and is determined to help. That’s of course assuming either of them know if and how he can. Of course there are boys in this mix too, and like with many teenage crushes her’s with “Aiden” (Luke Prael) isn’t reciprocated nor is that of “Gabe” (Jake Ryan) with her. Maybe, though, it’s worth her considering that despite the more obvious confidences on display, many of her contemporaries are in exactly the same boat as her, they just display their emotions differently. It’s quite a tough watch this as it rather brutally and honestly displays just how different it is for kids nowadays to come to terms with impending adulthood in a limelight of audio and video that didn’t exist when I was that age. Hell, we’d not that long had colour television. The writing has an authenticity to it that can make you squirm with associative embarrassment, it can almost make you want to recoil from the screen - and that is a testament to her effort, but also to an enthusiastic one from Ryan and a considered one from Hamilton. There’s plenty of dark humour here, too, to oil the wheels of her journey of self-discovery and it says as much about the pitfalls of modern day parenting as it does about modern day adolescence. It did make me very glad that I don’t have to survive in their modern world seeking and/or delivering constant approval and appreciation. Worth a watch.