Eighth Grade

ghth 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.

g 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.