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.
Elsie Fisher Josh Hamilton Emily Robinson Jake Ryan Daniel Zolghadri Fred Hechinger Imani Lewis Luke Prael Catherine Oliviere Nora Mullins Gerald Jones Missy Yager Shacha Temirov Greg Crowe Thomas J O'Reilly Frank Deal J. Tucker Smith Tiffany Grossfeld Trinity Goscinsky-Lynch Natalie Carter Kevin R. Free Keith Maurice Davis Deborah Unger William Alexander Wunsch Marguerite Stimpson Tristan Wheeler Kylie Seaman Dylan Vonderhorst Luke Mulligan Show All…
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USA
Sundance Film Festival
USA
South by Southwest Film Festival
USAR
Brazil16
PortugalM/16
AustraliaM
Ireland15A
UK15
FranceU
Germany12
JapanG
UK
Russia18+
France12
USA
NetherlandsAL
UK
FinlandK-7
Australia
Brazil
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Japan
Netherlands
Portugal
Russia
UK
USA
three (non-spoilery) thoughts from a second viewing:
1) the final scene of this movie is maybe my favorite scene of any movie released this year
2) there’s a scene where kayla is walking around and talking nervously on the phone, shot in a mid-close up with the camera following her as she walks back and forth, passing a big window. when she passes the window, the light shining through is like a sudden, disorienting flash, and when combined with the constant movement and claustrophobic framing, the shot makes you feel a little dizzy and uneasy, the same way she’s feeling. it’s an outstanding, understated shot and a super impressive directorial move from a first-time filmmaker
3) kayla has a cheat code guide for a pokemon game in the bookmarks of her web browser. now that’s a fuckin extremely real detail of 8th grade
the fact that someone shouts "lebron james" more than once in this shows how true to real life it is
“stay cool, and i can’t wait to be you”
i’ve said it for years: loneliness is underrated. showing it on screen is really tricky territory, it’s either too dull or too dark. and in almost every coming of age film, the protagonist has a best friend, or even a big group of them, close knit and finishing each other’s sentences. but what about all the kids who didn’t have that? the ones that try for years just to make a connection, who can’t help but obsess about it. why don’t people like me? am i not trying hard enough? what could i say? what could i do? a lot of the time it isn’t anyone’s fault at all. it’s just…
Once in a while there’s a movie that is so brazen and real and self-reflexive about the way it portrays a topic that, if it’s successful enough, any movie made thereafter about the same topic has a responsibility to meet it’s baseline. Like, The Dark Knight forced superhero movies into a more serious corner, Cabin In The Woods forced horror movies to examine their own cliches and work around them. I think Eighth Grade is that movie for teenagers.
It is so absolutely perfect in the way it gives a voice to its main character and the people in her life that I cannot imagine watching something as melodramatic or saccharine as (name any Netflix teen movie) and not demanding better of it. Eighth Grade is the new baseline.
but when will a boy whisk me away to a chicken nugget date complete with multiple sauces, archery skills, and lightsaber utensils?
Rather nervously sat down to watch this with our two teen daughters. I thought it might be traumatizing, too close to home, especially for our oldest, who has severe social anxiety and depression. But we stayed up til 2 AM afterwards talking. There were tears and hugs. They told us stuff they feel now and stuff they’d felt in middle school that they couldn’t say before. They saw themselves onscreen and saw someone knew and someone cared.
So grateful to Bo Burnham and the medium of film — my girls felt seen.
*three photobooth beeps*
Hey guys! Karsten here, back with another video. Can confirm this movie is great.
Gucci!
Girl in the back of the theatre yelled “THE DAD NEVER HAS A SHIRT ON BUT I’M OKAY WITH IT”
