Bo Burnham Makes A Strong Directorial Debut With The Harrowingly Awkward Eighth Grade

Imagine going back in time five years ago and telling someone "By 2018, one-half of Key & Peele, the lead vocalist of The Coup and Bo Burnham will all have directed acclaimed indie movies." It would sound beyond nuts, but then again, so are the majority of things in 2018 America, at least this is a more pleasant variety of nuts. Yes, Bo Burnham has made a smooth transition from music-heavy stand-up comedy over into directing motion pictures with Eighth Grade, which is the rare motion picture to dare to center a story around those legendarily bad years in one's life when you're trapped in the tail end of your Middle School career.


This is exactly where Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) is in her life as she heads down the final week of Eighth Grade. Like the lead characters in The Edge of Seventeen or Lady Bird, Kayla doesn't fit easily into any sort of well-worn archetypes like nerd or jock, rather, she's just this introverted individual who struggles with socializing with her peers. While her persona in her YouTube advice is that of a knowledgeable and experienced human being with sage advice to spare, Kayla in real life is struggling in this final week of Middle School to feel like she fits in. Eighth Grade follows her various attempts to be more outgoing and all the awkwardness that transpires because of those attempts.

And when I say awkwardness, I mean that Eighth Grade is relentless in how it assaults the viewer in distinctly recognizable instances of middle school awkwardness. The skin-crawling uncomfortableness that stems from Kayla trying to talk to two other clearly disinterested girls in her grade, for instance, put me right back into my own eighth-grade experiences and the struggles, akin to pulling teeth, of trying to connect with other kids who clearly wanted nothing to do with you. And that's only the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the embarrassing situations Kayla encounters throughout the movie, there's nary a scene here without some moment or social faux pas that'll leave you gritting your teeth in anxiety. 

Bo Burnham's script clearly gets the unique level of awkwardness that exists only at this stage of life and brings it to life with all of its imperfections intact, complete with the characters (even adults) speaking in a realistic manner that see's people having to start sentences over or mispronouncing words. These bold choices in the screenplay are meant to put the viewer inside Kayla's head, as are a barrage of licensed needle drops that typically show what kind of music Kayla is listening to on her phone at any given moment and an original electronic orchestral score by Anna Meredith that feels like a highly unusual choice for this type of coming of age story. It's another one of Eighth Grade's daring moves that end up paying off big time since the score itself is awesome.

Burnham and cinematographer Andrew Wehde similarly reinforce the internal emotions of Kayla through some clever pieces of camerawork, most notably a slow pan out when Kayla is standing just outside of a pool party that memorably depicts how isolated Kayla feels from her peers on a visual level. So many aspects of Eighth Grade are informed by the incredibly realistically rendered character of Kayla and the characters fascinatingly realistic nature is due primarily due to the extraordinary performance given by Elsie Fisher, previously best known for being the voice of the youngest daughter (the one who goes "IT'S SO FLUFFY!") in the Despicable Me movies.

It's hard to imagine the awkwardness of Eighth Grade being so palpable and effective without this fully committed turn from Fisher, she's so good at conveying the characters frequently uncomfortable nature in ways both overt and impressively subtle, man is she ever good at little pieces of body language that speak volumes about how unsure Kayla is of herself. This is one of those performances that feels at once very much like its own distinct creation and also tapping into universal experiences of being trapped in this awkward part of one's life. Real life Eighth Grade is hell on Earth, but Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade movie, on the other hand, is great, though be forewarned, this thing is harrowingly uncomfortable to watch at times.