Eighth Grade review: A simple story with the emotions of a cinematic epic

Bo Burnham's directorial debut is led by an incredibly nuanced performance from newcomer Elsie Fisher

Dir: Bo Burnham. Cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan. Cert: 15, 94 mins

It’s a rare and precious feeling when a film completely dismantles you. Eighth Grade – the directorial debut of US comedian Bo Burnham – breaks down every delusion we have about ourselves and burrows deep into those parts we’ve made such an effort to lock away. You may cry. You may shudder as every awkward social interaction that’s kept you up at night replays in your head all at once. You may feel the sharp pain associated with those moments when you feel completely isolated from the world. Burnham may have crafted a simple story about the most ordinary of teenage girls, but it speaks with the emotions of a true cinematic epic.

Elsie Fisher stars as 13-year-old Kayla, whose experiences aren’t brimming with conflict. We watch her navigate the last week of middle school, as she gradually confronts the fact that she’s failed to become the person she’d promised herself to be. There’s no boyfriend in the picture and no real friends to speak of. What she does have is a YouTube channel that no one watches and a crippling lack of self-confidence. Everyone around her keeps telling her that now is the time to be happy and carefree, but she’s too consumed by the knowledge that her reality doesn’t match up with her expectations.

It’s this gulf that forms the driving force behind anxiety – as the mind struggles to discern between what we think is true and what is actually true – and Eighth Grade is a film very much concerned with how controlling anxiety can be. “I’m always nervous,” Kayla confesses at one point. “I could be doing nothing, and I’m still nervous. It’s like that feeling before you ride a rollercoaster – that stupid butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling. Except that feeling you get after you ride the rollercoaster never comes.”

And so, she tries to escape that nervousness by perfecting a new Kayla – an online Kayla. We watch what is, essentially, performance art, as she scrolls through Instagram, liking and commenting on every post she comes across, despite never having the courage to speak to these people in real life. She snaps a hundred selfies to find the one acceptable combination that feels both flattering and effortless. Her YouTube persona doles out advice we’re not sure she actually believes in. “It’s not like I’m scared to not talk, I just don’t want to,” she assures us, but when we see her in conversation, she spurts out a few “yeahs” and frantic nods, while the panicked look in her eyes betrays her desperation to participate. Fisher communicates so much through her body language, freeing the script (also written by Burnham) from the need to ever explicitly tell us her state of mind. It’s an incredibly nuanced performance that suggests Fisher, whose previous credits include Despicable Me, has a bright future ahead of her.

While Eighth Grade’s themes transcend Kayla’s own perspective (Burnham has spoken about the film existing out of a desire to channel his own experiences with anxiety), it’s also firmly grounded in the real world of today’s teenagers. Given Burnham's someone whose career first started on YouTube, it’s understandable he's expected to have some authority on the subject. But, in truth, as a 28-year-old, the internet he once knew is already worlds away from what exists today. Kayla discovers that even high-schoolers can barely comprehend what it’s like to have Snapchat when you’re 12 years old. It makes it all the more impressive that Eighth Grade boasts such impeccable attention to detail. In one scene, a kid yells out “LeBron James” – a niche joke from Vine, an old platform for short, looping videos – in the middle of an active shooter drill. The moment is a subtle, but surprisingly chilling snapshot of modern America.

Burnham’s film is built around the experiences society has taught us to brush off as insignificant, despite the fact they can actually become the things that define us, for better or worse. Kayla’s dad (Josh Hamilton) wants only to be there for her, but since she refuses to believe she’s worthy of love, the two end up clashing. That in itself is a tragedy, compounded by the flashes of fear that interrupt Hamilton’s otherwise gentle demeanour. These moments are given their due spotlight, underlined by Anna Meredith’s clever score, that makes a collection of synths sound as huge and sweeping as an orchestra. In fact, it’s a little ironic that this film is being released in the UK in the same week as Avengers: Endgame, literally the most epic of imaginable releases. In Eighth Grade, having to walk out in your swimsuit at a middle-school pool party is just as a daunting as taking on supervillain Thanos himself.