Kayla Day, who is about to graduate eighth grade, spends what feels like an eternity to apply make up and get dressed just so she can roll back into bed and take a selfie with the caption “Just woke up like this!” She will get exactly zero likes on that Instagram post, the same number that she has on her YouTube channel where she regularly posts self-help tips about how to not be phony. And as she sends her image into the world, she’ll toss her phone onto her bed, anxious at what might come back her way.
This is the protagonist of Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, a girl young enough to have grown up with the expectation that in order to be liked, you have to get likes. You have to brand yourself and act as an influencer in every aspect of your online presence in order to give the impression you have a personality. The only problem is that Kayla (Elsie Fisher) has no friends, digitally or in real life. She’s drearily alone with no actually discernable interests, and yet she is still unhealthily self-absorbed and addicted to her phone. This is an unhappy person.
And yet what’s weird about Burnham’s Eighth Grade is that it’s framed as a coming of age story rather than a commentary about life in a digital age. It strives for awkward humor and a warming story of growth and self-discovery. But watching it is sadder and more cringe-inducing than you might anticipate. Burnham may hope that Kayla represents a large swath of teens at this tricky age. But ultimately, Kayla feels like an extreme, and it’s depressing to watch a character who seems to dislike herself this much.
Eighth Grade is set at the tail end of Kayla’s junior high experience. Her classmates have voted her “most quiet,” and as she opens a shoe box full of items she made when starting sixth grade, she looks at it sadly as though it belongs to a person she no longer recognizes.
The kids and teachers in her school are all predictably awful. Burnham stages a quick montage of kids smelling markers, picking at braces or even masturbating under their desks. Adults find inopportune moments to dab or to call a sex-ed course “lit.” And the boy Kayla’s obsessed with, voted “best eyes” and wearing a Steph Curry jersey, only takes interest in Kayla when she alludes that she’s taken nude photos of herself.
Kayla’s dad, a single parent, looks like a saint, but you wonder how he got so oblivious to how miserable she is, or how he failed to notice that she’s using a phone so cracked that she pricks her finger when she touches it. He couldn’t be further from his daughter at this moment, and she couldn’t be more hostile towards him.
Eventually Kayla is paired with a friendly, older high school girl who takes a liking to her. And you beg for a moment where she might poke her head out of her shell and show some life. No such luck, and things only get scarier from there.
As Burnham said in his interview on “WTF,” there are no tragedies in Eighth Grade, no moments of truly manipulative melodrama that could cause Kayla real pain. It’s just that at this volatile age, everything seems like the end of the world.
That may sound like a refreshing change of pace from so many soapy teen dramas. But Eighth Grade is even more intensely emotional than those stories, overstating the drama to where it’s painful to watch.
We know high school will be better, and looking back at eighth grade, you realize it really wasn’t so bad. But Burnham’s film is very effective at making us feel the way Kayla does now. And no matter what Instagram filter you put on it, it’s not a pretty picture.
2 ½ stars
I don’t think Kayla’s character is extreme at all….my 13-year-old self was able to relate to her almost entirely. I found the story refreshing, and definitely better than 2.5 stars!