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13-year-old Kayla ( Elsie Fisher ) hosts a Youtube series called "Kayla's Korner" where she gives advice to an imagined audience of her peers. She picks topics like "Being Yourself" and "Putting Yourself Out There" and stumbles her way through a pep-talk peppered with "like" and glances at her notes. A glimpse of the subscriber count shows that Kayla's Korner hasn't exactly taken off. "Eighth Grade," the extraordinarily assured feature film debut by writer-director and standup comedian Bo Burnham , starts out with one of these videos and it is so touchingly real, so embarrassingly true to life, you might swear it was improvised, or found footage. But it's not. This is Elsie Fisher, a 13-year-old actress herself, amazingly in touch with what it's like to be in the stage of life she's actually in . Kayla airbrushes out her acne, and swoops on heavy eyeliner. When you see what her life is actually like the Kayla's Korner videos take on an almost tragic significance. But it's strangely hopeful too. This is a young girl trying to understand what she is going through, and she does so by positioning herself as an expert and a helper to others. 

Kayla lives at home with her dad ( Josh Hamilton ). There's no mother in the picture (why isn't explained until near the end). Her dad struggles to keep a connection with his adolescent daughter, who seems hell bent on shutting him out. The dad's attempts at conversation ("Are you excited about high school?" "You're such a cool kid, those videos you do? They're amazing.") mortify her. Kayla doesn't have any friends, and harbors a gigantic crush on the sleepy-eyed uber-confident Aiden ( Luke Prael ), swooning whenever she looks at him. She also stares longingly at Kennedy, the Queen Bee of middle school ( Catherine Oliviere ). 

Bo Burnham knows that of all the terrors in this world, there is nothing quite as terrifying as being a shy 8th grader, attending a birthday party for the most popular kid in school. Filmed like a moment from "Amityville Horror," Kayla stands at the sliding glass doors in her lime-green one-piece bathing suit, shoulders hunched, arms dangling down, staring out at the playful shenanigans of her classmates, all of whom display the social ease utterly unattainable to an outsider like Kayla. Burnham pulls the camera back slowly, as the electronic music (composed by Anna Meredith ) blots out all other sound, with Kayla hovering in the background, a ghostly figure seen through glass. "Eighth Grade" is full of stylistic flourishes like this. A flourish can be empty, a flourish can keep the audience comfortably "above" the action onscreen. But Burnham knows what he's doing. Every moment is life-or-death when you're 13. These flourishes identify us so strongly with Kayla that every social scenario is pierced with emotional peril. 

There's all kinds of sublimated "commentary" in "Eighth Grade" about what it's like to be a teenager today: constant internet use, scrolling through the carefully curated Instagram feeds of classmates, the societal pressure to seem "okay" and "fabulous" all the time. When a teenager feels pressure to "perform" her life on Instagram or Snapchat, it changes the game in subtle ways that probably aren't even understood yet. But Burnham keeps the touch light and humorous. He doesn't lecture from a podium. There's an overhead shot of a school assembly, showing hundreds of kids sitting there clutching their phones in their hands. In a chilling sequence, the kids are put through a lockdown drill, where they have to hide under the desks from a hypothetical shooter. They all crouch there, waiting for it to be over, faces lit up by the glow of their phones. But Burnham stays down on the ground with the kids, he's in the thick of it. If social media can keep us disconnected from one another, it can also connect us. After a day "shadowing" a kindly high-school student named Olivia ( Emily Robinson ), Kayla gets up the courage to call Olivia and thank her, and Olivia is thrilled in her new role as mentor and friend. She even invites Kayla to come hang out at the mall. 

Darker moments threaten. An encounter with an older boy, who tries to force her to play Truth or Dare in the back of his car, highlights just how terrifyingly young she is. She has insanely passionate feelings for Aiden, but all the other stuff—wanting to do  anything about those feelings—are not there for her yet. Her father trails along behind her, trying to give her space, but also worried about what might be going on. His concern makes him "hover," and Kayla is desperate to get away from him, but in a late scene, when she asks him if it makes him "sad" to have her as a daughter—his shock that she would feel that way about herself is heartbreaking. 

"Eighth Grade" is so grounded in the reality of middle school it almost operates like a horrible collective flashback. All of the kids in the cast are real middle-schoolers, not 20-somethings playing at adolescence. There's a vast difference between a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old, but this has—typically—been difficult for films to acknowledge or portray. The struggles of teenagers are woven into our cinematic history. But middle school kids? It's harder. 8th graders still have one foot in the sandbox. They are still children, but with bodies exploding into young adulthood, creating a miasma of self-loathing, hormonal surges, irritability ... When the parade of middle schoolers walk in single file into the high school for "shadow" day, the high school kids lining the hallways look like adults in comparison. 

Burnham knows how middle-schoolers really talk. They stumble, they repeat themselves, they try to sound older, but can't help reverting. They don't have a handle on social language yet. "I like your shirt ... I have a shirt too," Kayla says to Kennedy, who stares at Kayla with such dead eyes you can tell she can't wait to look at her phone again. When the Truth or Dare boy says something suggestive, the anxious confused Kayla murmurs to herself, "Okay," but what comes out is, "O-kee..." Fisher's actual age is one of the reasons "Eighth Grade" has such a sense of verisimilitude. Her smile is so rare that when it comes it almost cracks her face, but the joy is so enormous is threatens to push her into a panic attack. She is in the stage of becoming herself. Her dad's loving anxiety is the audience's. But "Eighth Grade", with all its emotional intensity, is not about "what happens." It's about what it feels like to be thirteen. Middle school sucks. Everybody knows that. It's a stage you have to go through. But while you're there, it feels like it goes on forever . Try telling a 13-year-old "This too shall pass." 

Bo Burnham, who got his start as a teenager making Youtube videos of his comedy routines, is only 27 years old. He respects where Kayla is at. He doesn't condescend to her, or to anyone else. "Eighth Grade" is an act of nervy humorous empathy.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Eighth Grade (2018)

Rated R for language and some sexual material.

Elsie Fisher as Kayla

Josh Hamilton as Mark

Daniel Zolghadri as Riley

Frank Deal as Officer Todd

Greg Crowe as Principal McDaniels

Emily Robinson as Olivia

Cinematographer

• Andrew Wehde
• Jennifer Lilly
• Anna Meredith

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‘Eighth Grade’ Review: Tender Take on Teen Angst Is Flat-Out Triumph

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

I’ve been talking and thinking about this fun-to-decode, impossible-to-forget gift from the cinema gods since I saw it at Sundance in January. Now Eighth Grade is going into wide release – and no excuses will be accepted for you missing it. First-time filmmaker Bo Burnham – the 27-year-old, comedy-and-music dude from YouTube – has taken the tiniest details in the life of a 13-year-old girl moving through the digital age, filtered them through his own madly inventive headspace, and created the kind of movie that leaves you laughing hysterically or fighting back tears, often simultaneously. It’s not a documentary, though it often feels like one.

Kayla, the eighth grader played by the astonishing Elsie Fisher, seems to be growing up – or fighting it – right before our eyes. (The young actor voiced young Agnes in the first two Despicable Me movies, but this is her breakthrough performance.) She wants so desperately to be cool that barely speaks at her middle school for fear of shattering the illusion; rather than earn her friends and popularity, it simply gets her voted “Most Silent” in the yearbook. Instead, Kayla makes YouTube videos that no one watches about how to be confident and put yourself out there. signing off the catchphrase “Gucci!” It’s a case study in adolescent awkwardness.

Burnham has a keen ear for teen-speak, however, and though Kayla barely reacts to a student drill about a potential school shooting, she’s alert to every slight inflicted by her peers – especially the hallway divas too self-absorbed to even bother being proper mean girls. When she snags a reluctant invite to a pool party thrown by the popular Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), you can feel her mortification at putting on a swimsuit; ditto being in proximity to the hunky Aiden (Luke Prael), who casually asks if Kayla is into blow jobs. The girl who’s never been kissed nods in the affirmative – then looks up what the phrase means on YouTube. Burnham doesn’t praise or demonize the Internet: It’s just there, a fact of every life, ready to measure human value through likes, shares, retweets and Snapchat judgements. And it’s how Kayla reacts to the world when her smartphone is temporarily (and scarily) out of reach that raises the bar for both the character and the film itself.

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At home, barely looking up when her single dad (a tender, terrific Josh Hamilton) tries to initiate conversation, Kayla is a slave to her devices. But when she visits the high school she’ll soon be attending, the young woman clicks with Olivia (Emily Robinson), a compassionate senior who helps her open up. The progress is interrupted by an incident in which Kayla finds herself alone in a car with one of Olivia’s friends, Riley (Daniel Zolghadri), an older boy who tries to intimidate her into taking her shirt off. The scene, which stops short of the cringe level you’ll find in the films of Harmony Korine and Todd Solondz, is nonetheless unnerving. You feel every rattling moment of it as Fisher, who 14 years old during filming, cuts to the core of adolescent agony. And in Kayla’s climactic scene with her father, her awkwardness becomes essential to human connection.

It’s stand-out sequences like their heart-to-heart – and the superb speech that Hamilton delivers during it – that make Eighth Grade is one of the best movies of the year. But mostly, it’s the empathy that Burnham invests in his characters that turns this coming-of-age movie into something special and unique. The comedian-turned-filmmaker has the wisdom to know that eighth grade isn’t a stage – it’s a state of mind most us never entirely grow out of. That’s why his movie feels both indelibly of the moment and achingly timeless. Gucci!

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Eighth Grade review: a devastating comedy drama about school

Bo Burnham's school comedy drama Eighth Grade will break your heart and spit you out raw - and it's brilliant

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Sometimes simple things can be the most impactful. So it is with Eighth Grade , a small story of a young girl during her last week before she graduates and goes off to high school, which manages to resonate and devastate on a grand scale. The debut feature from actor and comedian Bo Burnham, it’s a keenly observed comedy-drama that at times feels as tense and harrowing as a horror movie, even though in big dramatic terms nothing much really happens. Kids this is not, yet as a highly empathetic and slightly terrifying picture of the pain of being a young person in the modern era, it’s just as scary and important.

Elsie Fisher stars as Kayla Day, a slightly awkward but very bright and sensitive girl who makes YouTube videos offering nuggets of positive life advice that no one really watches or comments on. Approaching graduation of middle school, Kayla is voted “most quiet” in a painfully misjudged class awards. But despite her discomfort and anxiety, she attempts to connect with the other students in various ways: attending a pool party hosted by one of the ‘cool girls’ who’s forced to invite her; hanging out at the mall with a new, older friend she meets at her high-school induction; and plucking up the courage to talk to the boy she likes.

Traversing that agonising point between childhood and adulthood, Kayla’s life is a balance of spots and braces, coloured pens and doodles, Instagram filters and naked selfies – and Burnham’s script brings out that dichotomy with sincerity, humour and a lightness of touch that makes the movie feel incredibly true and familiar, and yet not at all stale.

Burnham may never have been a teenage girl, but his inspiration for the film was struggles of his own with anxiety and this authenticity is what makes the movie so emotionally affecting. Whatever your gender, whatever your age and whether you were a shy kid or even if you weren’t, Kayla is instantly recognisable, but still unique, real and fully drawn.

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The script is perfect, but it’s Fisher’s performance that’s at the heart of the movie. Stroppy but so likable (the scene in the car where she’s having a go at her dad for “being too quiet and looking weird and sad” is hilarious), incredibly vulnerable but also impressively brave, Kayla is ultimately a hopeful and almost heroic character in an incredibly confusing world. All the young cast are excellent and it’s a credit to them and to Burnham’s direction that the interactions feel so natural.

While Eighth Grade does talk about universal truths, it’s deeply grounded in the now. Kayla and her school mates are completely nonchalant during training about what to do in a school shooting. Sex education classes are clinical and biological, but when Kayla’s crush Aidan (Luke Prael – wonderfully awful) asks her if she gives blow jobs, it’s a disturbing YouTube tutorial she turns to in an attempt to learn how. And in the movie’s most distressing centrepiece sequence, Kayla is completely unprepared and unequipped to know how to behave.

Given how key this message is in the film, it’s ironic and a bit depressing that the film’s been given a 15 certificate in the UK – meaning actual eighth graders who are living through this reality aren’t actually allowed to watch it. It’s a massive shame, because although the movie is at times tense and alarming, its ultimate message is one of hope, support and understanding.

While Kayla’s life is difficult, it’s the central relationship between her and her father (Josh Hamilton – excellent) that provides the most moving sequence in the film. Delicately played, nuanced, understated and sincere – and far from encouraging kids to watch porn vids online – if anything Eighth Grade is a reminder for teens that your parents love you no matter what. Despite the harsh realities of teenage life in the social media era, this is an incredibly positive movie with a closing beat that delivers a powerful message for young people: give yourself a break.

Eighth Grade opens in the UK a day after Avengers: Endgame , which is likely to be the biggest cinema event of the decade. And there’s something perfect, beautiful, funny and fitting about that. Endgame might yet be a masterpiece (we’ll let you know when we’ve seen it), but there’s every chance a small story about big things, starring a little girl who becomes her own hero, will have more power and impact than a titan who can wipe out half the universe with the snap of his fingers. If you only see one movie this April, make it Eighth Grade .

Eighth Grade opens in UK cinemas on 26 April

Rosie Fletcher

Rosie Fletcher is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Den Of Geek. She’s been an entertainment journalist for more than 15 years previously working at DVD & Blu-ray Review, Digital…

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Review: All the Feels, Hurts and Laughs of ‘Eighth Grade’

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By Manohla Dargis

• July 11, 2018

There are few more poignant, exasperating creatures than teenage girls. (I speak from personal experience.) And rarely are they as heart-pangingly real as the girl fumbling through the sharp, smart comedy “Eighth Grade.” Like a lot of people, Kayla (the wonderful Elsie Fisher), spends a lot of time tethered to a cellphone that serves as her touchingly imperfect portal to the world. Day and deep into night, she scrolls through screen after screen of images — celebrities, cartoons, celebrity cartoons, stranger selfies — sprinkled with hashtags, online handles, candy-colored effects and emojis.

A hyper-connected voyeur, Kayla seems hooked on other people’s experiences and emotions, a torrent suggesting that they, unlike her, are living their best lives and having the coolest, most awesome time. In an unplugged era, she might have just tucked into a corner with a hardcover diary, dotting her I’s with hearts as she poured out her most intimate thoughts. Instead, she watches. She also makes affirmational videos that she posts on her online channel, which is one of this movie’s shrewdest conceits. “The topic of today’s video,” she announces in one, “is being yourself,” before doling out some commendable advice: “Don’t care about what other people think about you.”

Child, heal thyself! That’s what you may find yourself thinking as “Eighth Grade” opens and Kayla slumps off to class, walking with shoulders hunched and head bowed against the chattering, exuberant student tide coming at her. It’s the last week of eighth grade, and it’s hard not to feel for the poor thing. It’s also hard not to feel exasperated by what makes Kayla so dear — her frailties, mistakes, gawkiness — as she doodles alone at lunch or buries her head in her hands after being voted “most quiet” by the other students.

[ Eighth graders watch “Eighth Grade,” and they can relate. ]

“Eighth Grade” is a simple story of an unremarkable girl, tenderly and movingly told. It was written and directed by Bo Burnham , a stand-up comic who started out by posting videos of himself on YouTube. He obviously has some ideas about the internet, which takes away so much — time, sanity, reason — but also gives. For Kayla, being online is a way of being and of becoming. That’s not necessarily understandable to grown-ups, including her single father, Mark (a note-perfect Josh Hamilton), who, with eyebrows at full alert, hovers around her with a look of barely suppressed panic bordering on terror, as if one ill-timed word or gesture could destroy life as they know it.

Movies about teenagers are often filled with contrived excesses, but Mr. Burnham understands that some of the most pronounced extremes — the drama, the comedy, the horror — take place in that lonely room known as our heads. Not much happens in “Eighth Grade” except that, for Kayla, everything does and with exclamation points. When she stares at a cute boy (Luke Prael), the music thunders and the image slows, much as it did when Dudley Moore gawked at Bo Derek once upon a time. And when Kayla walks into a pool party wearing a tragic green swimsuit, she turns into the imperiled heroine of a psychodrama that briefly transforms into a psychological thriller.

The pool party is a squirmy tour de force embellished with a punctuating zoom and a plangent sense of dread that make Kayla’s isolation feel like alienation. From the way that she walks into the party — she scans the scene like a soldier heading into battle, clutching her middle as if already wounded — it’s evident that Kayla believes everyone is looking at her. What makes the scene more uncomfortable and touching is that as she wades into the suffocating surge of the cute and popular, no one even notices her. (The one attendee who does is a nerd delightfully played by Jake Ryan.) It’s a brutal scene and might have been unbearably painful if Mr. Burnham didn’t love Kayla so much.

But he does (and he’s funny), a love that Ms. Fisher — only 14 when the movie was shot — complements with a performance that’s so visceral and unforced that you might find yourself transported back in time and walking again into an agonizingly similar party, thighs swishing. Part of what makes her feel so convincing is that for all her time online, Kayla looks and moves like an actual underage human being. She isn’t as smoothed and hollowed out as the smiling avatars she watches. She’s an image-obsessed 21st-century adolescent staring at a screen, but she’s also just another teenager lurching forward, one comic, hapless step at a time.

It would be easy to read “Eighth Grade” as a simple cautionary tale — the following should be read in the disproving voice of adult received wisdom — about Kids These Days. Yet to do so would be to miss a crucial point about Kayla’s videos, which are at once an act of creation and self-creation. (And, by extension, are like this movie.) Kayla is lucky if she gets two views for a video, yet she continues making them, yammering into the seeming void. No matter how lousy or lonely her day, she tries to keep talking, pushing on, reaching out. She knows — or just hopes — that someone, somewhere, is paying attention, a much-tested optimism that Mr. Burnham celebrates beautifully.

Picture credits with an earlier version of this article misidentified the photographer. The pictures are by Josh Ethan Johnson, not Linda Kallerus.

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Eighth Grade Rated R for real human language. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes.

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Eighth Grade Parent Guide

A mesmerizing performance by elsie fisher as a socially awkward teen navigating the pitfalls of middle school with courage and hope..

Elsie Fisher plays Kayla, an quiet, self-conscious teenager attempting to endure her last week in the eighth grade.

Release date July 13, 2018

Run Time: 93 minutes

Official Movie Site

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by kirsten hawkes.

Parent Previews does not normally review Restricted movies. However, we do make occasional exceptions for films which are aimed at teens or which raise important issues for parents and families.

For parents, Eighth Grade is a cross between a horror film and a documentary. With almost anthropological detail it focuses on the struggles and heartaches of a 13-year-old girl in her last week of middle school. What the movie illuminates about adolescence in the internet age is enough to keep most parents up at night.

Eventually Kayla does attract some attention, yet it is definitely the wrong kind. Desperately seeking attention from her crush, Kayla tells him she keeps dirty pictures on her phone. He asks her if she performs a specific sexual act to which she responds in the affirmative. She then goes home and looks it up on the internet. Kayla is appalled at what she finds and viewers will also be unhappy with her search results, especially when one involves a brief image of transparent plastic male genitalia. On another occasion, a male character gets in the back seat of his car with Kayla, removes his shirt and tries to manipulate her into removing hers. This episode is disturbing for many reasons but two stand out: first, the boy insists that he is doing this for her own good – so that she won’t “suck” the first time she has an “experience”. And second, Kayla abjectly apologizes to the boy for refusing to participate. Watching her repeated apologies left me alternating between sorrow and white hot rage on Kayla’s behalf.

Despite the uncomfortable sexual content in this film, there are some positive messages as well. Most of these center around Kayla, whose courage and resilience are genuinely inspiring. Actress Elsie Fisher delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as she fearlessly exposes Kayla’s strengths and vulnerabilities. Viewers see Kayla earnestly following YouTube make up tutorials in front of her mirror, which is surrounded by motivational and inspirational quotes. We watch her have a panic attack as she changes into her unflattering swimming suit at a pool party where she doesn’t have any friends. We see her, nervous but brave, reach for the karaoke mic at the same party. As Kayla says in one of her videos, “Confidence is a choice. You can just start acting like it even if you don’t have any. A big part of being confident is being brave. And you can’t be brave without being scared.” Sign me up for a Team Kayla t-shirt.

The other positive message in this movie comes from Kayla’s father Mark (Josh Hamilton). Earnest, affectionate and completely bemused by his daughter’s behavior, this dad gets an “A” for effort. He keeps trying to talk, even when Kayla is glued to her phone. He apologizes when he gets it wrong. And when Kayla breaks down in hopeless tears, he is right there, holding her close and saying the right things. Parents who have shared Mark’s perplexity will appreciate the authentic portrayal of this loving father.

Due to the sexual content issues in this movie, it is difficult to give it a blanket recommendation. Parents who want to understand today’s adolescent reality might want to make time for this film. Those who chose to watch it with their teens, should be prepared for an open and frank conversation, because Eighth Grade will definitely spark some after movie discussion.

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Kirsten hawkes, eighth grade rating & content info.

Why is Eighth Grade rated R? Eighth Grade is rated R by the MPAA for language and some sexual material.

Violence: The school conducts an active shooter drill: the students are lined up in the hallway as a masked adult walks down the corridor, randomly “shooting” students with a firearm. One student is shown with a bullet wound on her head which was made with make-up. The “victims” were pre-selected drama students. Sexual Content: During health class, a student is apparently masturbating. His actions are hidden under his shirt. References are made to sexting. A minor male character asks the protagonist if she performs a particular sexual activity. She goes home and looks it up on the internet. Some search results are shown, but no nudity. There is a brief glimpse of transparent plastic male genitalia.  Another male character removes his t-shirt and tries to manipulate the protagonist into removing hers. Profanity: There are over two dozen uses of course or sexual language. A character makes a sexual hand gesture with both hands. A sexual expletive is used on three occasions. A slang term for male genitalia is used repeatedly. A scatological curse word is used a few times as are some moderate profanities. A term of Christian deity is used. Alcohol / Drug Use: No drugs or alcohol are consumed but a middle school student is sniffing a marker in class.

Page last updated August 26, 2019

Eighth Grade Parents' Guide

Kayla shows signs of an anxiety disorder – a panic attack at the pool party and describing herself as constantly feeling nervous and full of butterflies. A growing body of research links social media with a significant increase in depression and anxiety amongst adolescents.  Do you think this relationship is real?

The relationship between smart phones and adolescent mental illness: Smart phones damage adolescent mental health . Smart phones don’t harm teens .

Kayla’s father keeps trying to communicate with her but she would rather be on her phone. Do you think this is a problem? Do you think parents should limit the amount of time their teens spend on their phones or other electronic devices? Should parents limit their own technology use?

Parents need to monitor teen screen time . Parents need to look at their own media use .

News About "Eighth Grade"

Eighth Grade is opening in limited release in the USA. It opens in select Canadian markets on July 20, 2018.

The most recent home video release of Eighth Grade movie is October 9, 2018. Here are some details…

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Screen Rant

Eighth grade review: a masterpiece of middle-school horror, eighth grade masterfully captures the emotional horror of being a generation z middle-schooler, yet tells a universally relatable coming of age story..

One of the most painfully authentic cinematic portraits of life as a young teenager in recent memory (if not ever), Eighth Grade marks actor/filmmaker Bo Burnham's feature-length debut behind the camera. The movie has been generating enthusiastic buzz since its premiere at the 2018 Film Festival back in January, and with good reason. Eighth Grade cuts to the heart of just how emotionally unconformable adolescence can be with surgical precision, at the same time that it examines issues that are specific to life in the twenty-first century. The result is a film that manages to be charming, tender, funny, and squirmy-inducingly realistic all at once. Eighth Grade masterfully captures the emotional horror of being a Generation Z middle-schooler, yet tells a universally relatable coming of age story.

Elsie Fisher stars in Eighth Grade as Kayla Day, an eighth grader who has one week left of middle-school before she graduates. While Kayla spends much of her free time filming and posting videos where she offers motivational advice to YouTube, she tends to keep to herself in school - enough to be dubbed "Most Quiet" by her classmates - and struggles to make friends. Similarly, Kayla's dad Mark (Josh Hamilton) has a difficult time connecting with her at home, in no small part because Kayla would much rather focus on reaching out to people through social media than talk to Mark about her day to day life.

As Kayla prepares to leave middle-school behind her, she also makes an effort to finally climb out of her shell. However, whether attending popular girl Kennedy's (Catherine Oliviere) birthday party or talking to her crush Aiden (Luke Prael), nothing seems to go Kayla's way and she mostly winds up being horribly embarrassed. Nevertheless, Kayla doesn't give up and does her best to follow her own inspirational advice, for the first time.

Written and directed by Burnham, Eighth Grade is so effective at pulling viewers into a middle-schooler's mentality that it may leave adults wondering if they really stopped being their ungainly 13-14 year old self at heart and have merely been pretending otherwise, all these years. As much as Burnham deserves to be recognized for this achievement, Fisher (who voiced Agnes in Despicable Me 1&2 ) is equally worthy of praise for her performance in the film. Thanks to her work here, Kayla comes off as being convincingly aloof, anxious, and angry in ways that most onscreen teenagers simply are not. Naturally, this makes the character utterly endearing and, at the same time, lets the audience feel every emotional triumph and failure in her life as strongly as she does (no matter how small or insignificant they may be in the grander scheme of things).

Eighth Grade is further aided in its efforts to tap into Kayla's state of mind by Burnham's willingness to include every visceral detail of middle-school life imaginable, whether that means showing teachers' desperate efforts to seem "hip", having students engage in all sorts of uncouth behavior in the middle of class, or allowing everyone to look as ordinary as they would in the real world (complete with bad haircuts and facial acne). Burnham and his cinematographer Andrew Wehde further photograph everything with unfiltered texture, yet still manage to seamlessly integrate more stylized camerawork into the proceedings here. In general, Eighth Grade is surprisingly imaginative in its craftsmanship, especially when it comes to making the scenes where Kayla is interacting with others through social media feel cinematic. Anna Meredith's exuberant score is also worth singling out, seeing as it livens up much of the film and gives it more personality than it might have possessed otherwise.

Moreover, as much as Fisher is the star here, Eighth Grade 's supporting cast is essential to maintaining the film's sense of verisimilitude, in their own right. The young actors here are convincing across the board, including those in minor roles like Jake Ryan (playing Kennedy's cousin Gabe) or Emily Robinson as Olivia, the cheery high school whom Kayla shadows for a day. Meanwhile, on the grown-up side of the equation, Hamilton is similarly excellent as Mark. Indeed, his well-intentioned, but often clunky attempts to support Kayla throughout the film ring true, as do his (sometimes woefully) misguided stabs at starting a conversation with his daughter.

Refreshingly, Eighth Grade never abandons its brutally honest approach either, even when it takes increasingly dramatic turns (to give its narrative a more definite form) on the way to its ending. Similarly, the film takes a critical look at how teenagers use social media tools (like Snapchat filters) and how much time they spend on their phones, yet it's never preachy nor particularly interested in making a grand statement about how young people socialize in the digital era. Instead, Eighth Grade is more interested in observing how life online can be as alienating, enjoyable, or challenging as someone's day to day journey in the real world. Burnham's film very much breaks new ground by portraying Generation Z teenagers and their lifestyles in such an emphatic light.

Like The Edge of Seventeen and Lady Bird (to name a couple of better-known recent examples), Eighth Grade tells a captivating and insightful story about growing up from the perspective of a teenaged girl. At the same time, Burnham's film reflects the unpleasant reality of that life experience so meticulously that audiences may find themselves laughing and being utterly horrified in equal measures during any one scene. It's certainly not the most relaxed time one can have watching a movie, but it is a transfixing one. Some might even find it to be therapeutic in the way that it lets them confront any lingering trauma they have from their time as a middle-schooler. In a summer that has already been full of great indie films and Sundance veterans (see also Sorry to Bother You , Leave No Trace ), this is another must-see at the arthouse.

Eighth Grade is now playing in NY/LA and will expand to theaters across the U.S. over the coming weeks. It is 94 minutes long and is rated R for language and some sexual material.

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Eighth Grade Reviews

Eighth Grade is a carefully constructed love letter to the messy, confusing years of middle school, and a reassurance to those going through it that things will eventually be okay.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

This is the kind of reassuring warm hug that’s actually a lie as pernicious as one in any romcom.

Full Review | Jan 6, 2023

Essential viewing for teenagers about to enter secondary (or high) school in the age of social media, as well as parents trying to understand or just get a glimpse inside what their children are doing on their phones all day.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 10, 2022

“Eighth Grade” doesn’t pave an easy path for its lead character. Kayla’s struggles are realistic, relatable and heartbreaking. You could almost call it relentless if not for the welcomed moments of levity strategically sprinkled throughout.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 20, 2022

"Eighth Grade" endeavors to tell the ponderous plight of this current connected generation and nails it with astonishing honesty and freshness.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 14, 2022

Eighth Grade is one of those rare films that speaks to everyone, regardless of its subjective specificity, through universal life lessons that every person must learn and overcome before becoming an adult.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 11, 2022

Burnham challenges us to look back on our own pasts and give those meme-ready phone surfers a big break.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2022

A relentlessly incisive and anxiety-inducing dumbo drop into the worst time of our collective lives

Full Review | Jan 10, 2022

Earnest and sweet, fumbling and awkward.

Full Review | Original Score: 70/100 | Aug 22, 2021

Eighth Grade, the film by first time writer-director Bo Burnham, is not for eighth graders. But if you're a parent, grandparent, or anyone who cares deeply about the 13 or 14 year-old in your life, this film is for you.

Full Review | Aug 13, 2021

Starring the naturally sympathetic young actress Elsie Fisher, it's a vivid and sometimes quietly heartbreaking reminder of how awkward growing up can be.

Full Review | May 11, 2021

Bo Burnham's brilliant directing debut will take you back to the awful awkwardness of adolescence.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 29, 2021

It's a crime that Elsie Fisher hasn't won every award possible for her work as the lead, and Josh Hamilton also deserves praise for his performance as Kayla's dad...

Full Review | Apr 16, 2021

Alfred Hitchcock allegedly claimed "drama is life with the dull bits cut out"; Eighth Grade instead makes the dull bits interesting. It is a surprising film - and a wonderful one.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Mar 17, 2021

Eighth Grade reminds us of the familiar growing pains in that unbalanced time transitioning from middle school to high school.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 3, 2021

An unvarnished, pimples and all, look at adolescence and the anxiety that comes with it

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 28, 2021

... an important movie that should be seen, thought about, and discussed, ideally with someone who's not your age.

Full Review | Feb 18, 2021

Eighth Grade has a way of hitting you right between the eyes with the real-life turmoil of being a teenager no matter how old you are now.

Full Review | Dec 10, 2020

Because of its aim to highlight the negative aspects that shape transitions into adulthood, the film poses a unique, profound perspective.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 5, 2020

Burnham's film gets the job done, delivering a fresh spin on the teenage angst genre.

Full Review | Nov 10, 2020

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Eighth Grade review – brilliant coming-of-age debut

Bo Burnham’s first feature film is a note-perfect tale of a shy teenager’s struggle with our internet-obsessed culture

A ccepting his directorial debut award from the National Board of Review in January, “internet comedian” turned film-maker Bo Burnham described his brilliantly empathetic first feature as “ an attempt to represent the kids who live their lives online ”; youngsters who have been “mischaracterised as self-obsessed, narcissistic, shallow”, but who are actually “self-conscious”.

Listed by Barack Obama as one of his favourite films of 2018 , Eighth Grade has prompted much soul-searching discussion about the plight of “generation Z” – the post-millennials whom Burnham astutely identifies as having been “forced by a culture they did not create to be conscious of themselves at every moment”. Yet for all its razor-sharp cultural accuracy (it’s clearly made by a film-maker who has listened to his young subjects), the real genius of Eighth Grade is its universality – an honesty and compassion that cut across generational boundaries. As Burnham proves, if you get the specifics right, the generalities will take care of themselves.

Rising star Elsie Fisher is astonishingly natural as Kayla, a socially anxious 13-year-old approaching the end of middle school. Crushingly voted “most quiet” in class, Kayla struggles to connect with her peers in person, passing in silence through the corridors of her school. Yet Kayla has a second life online, where she posts cute selfies and self-help videos on “Being Yourself” and “Putting Yourself Out There”. Undeterred by the fact that no one is watching, this engaging soul seems to be using her vlog channel to talk to herself, like the time-capsule video message she buried a few years ago as “a gift to a future you”.

At home, Kayla plugs in earphones to shut out her single father Mark (Josh Hamilton), whose clumsily proud devotion to his daughter reminded me of Billy Burke’s lovely Charlie Swan character from the Twilight movies (a thumb pricked on a broken phone-screen signals a modern twist on a fairytale trope).

Mark thinks Kayla is a marvel and has every confidence that she can be part of the “cool” crowd she idolises from a distance. But even when a parental invitation to a pool party promises to open new doors, Kayla is faced with the terrifying prospect of finding herself out of her depth.

The theme of youthful isolation has long been a staple of coming-of-age movies, diversely explored in films as different as Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen , Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In , Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang and, more recently, Deborah Haywood’s Pin Cushion or Jonah Hill’s Mid90s . It’s tempting to place Eighth Grade within a lineage of American high-school movies such as Mean Girls and The Breakfast Club (along with Obama, Molly Ringwald is another high-profile fan). Yet like all true coming-of-age classics – from Truffaut’s Les quatre cents coups to Céline Sciamma’s Bande de Filles/Girlhood and Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight – Burnham’s piercingly humanist movie makes the audience feel that what they are watching is personal to them , regardless of age, gender or nationality.

It’s also very funny, often unexpectedly so. Anyone who’s seen Burnham’s Repeat Stuff video (it’s on YouTube) will know that he’s adept at blending humour and horror, a facet showcased here during a school-shooting drill that morphs into a superbly cringey encounter with a creepy crush. Burnham and editor Jennifer Lilly understand the slapstick dynamics of long takes, hard cuts, parodic slow-mo and generate plenty of laughter amid the loneliness of this story. But they also know when to play it straight; a predatory scene with an older boy is made all the more powerful by its understatement, accentuating the insidious threat.

From the silent scream of her frown to the protective hunch of her shoulders, her face shrouded by her hair, Kayla’s story is eloquently told through Fisher’s perfectly nuanced physical performance. When she smiles, the radiant glow of her face is brighter than that of her iPhone screen. Crucially, Burnham finds both joy and kindness in this often dark environment, personified not only by Kayla’s unfailingly caring nature, but also by incidental characters such as Emily Robinson’s Olivia, who offers a glimpse of a happier future, and Jake Ryan’s Gabe, who features in one of the most upliftingly delightful movie scenes I have ever seen.

Underwriting it all is Anna Meredith’s mesmerising score, as intrinsically interwoven into the fabric of the film as Giorgio Moroder’s Oscar-winning electronic accompaniment to Midnight Express or Mica Levi’s unnerving sonic explorations for Under the Skin . From pulsing woozy disorientation to spiralling anxiety and transcendent aspiration, Meredith’s music strikes the perfect chord throughout, as thrillingly expressive and magically immersive as this wonderful film deserves.

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Film Review: ‘Eighth Grade’

Discover newcomer Elsie Fisher in, like, a totally spot-on, you know, portrait of Millennial angst and stuff, from first-time director Bo Burnham.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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No one likes eighth grade. It’s the compulsory military service of American adolescence, the cod liver oil every child must swallow on her way to adulthood. In the rigged Russian roulette game of human genetics, it’s the bullet in the chamber, that pimple-infested, body-odorous, hair-in-uncomfortable-new-places minimum-security prison every girl must endure, the real-life horror movie to which you can’t close your eyes. Worst of all, the scars that happen here are pretty much guaranteed to haunt you for life.

Welcome to “Eighth Grade,” kids! Whether it’s been two days or two decades since you suffered through it yourself, your heart goes out to Kayla ( Elsie Fisher ), the young woman we meet tightrope-walking over those shark-infested waters in writer-director Bo Burnham ’s remarkable feature debut. If Burnham’s name doesn’t ring a bell, then you most likely belong to the demographic who will see this movie as a cross between last year’s “Lady Bird” (also produced by Scott Rudin) and Larry Clark’s ultra-cautionary “Kids,” identifying with Kayla’s dad (Josh Hamilton, rivaling Michael Stuhlbarg in “Call Me by Your Name” for World’s Greatest Dad) as his daughter narrowly avoids (or not) the landmines upon which you’d gladly throw yourself in her place.

Like a taller and less-tattooed version of Justin Bieber, Burnham began his career on YouTube in late 2006 with an original song called “My Whole Family Thinks I’m Gay.” He was 16 at the time, three years older than Kayla’s character, and somehow managed to leverage his viral-video success into a comedy songwriting career, turning his quick-witted insights into piercingly funny, unapologetically irreverent rap songs. Apart from a handful of lo-fi music videos Burnham has made over the years, there was nothing to suggest that he had it in him to direct a film, which makes “Eighth Grade” one of the sweetest surprises of this year’s Sundance.

Bead-braided, 10-rated ’70s sex symbols aside, Bo is a boy’s name, of course, which makes this gender-flipped act of adolescent empathy all the more remarkable. Every year, Sundance is littered with deeply narcissistic, transparently autobiographical coming-of-age stories. As Hollywood lawyer Linda Lichter so aptly put it Peter Biskind’s “Down and Dirty Pictures”: “At Sundance, the bulk of the pictures are about losing your virginity. It’s babies making movies about babies. With some exceptions, the filmmakers don’t really have a voice yet.”

Burnham is that exception. An accomplished comedian, Burnham has already put in his 10,000 hours, honing what he has to say for nearly a dozen years, and as such, “Eighth Grade” shines as, like, a totally spot-on, you know, portrait of Millennial angst and stuff. That may be how Kayla (and all her peers) talk, punctuating their quasi-articulate ideas with hesitant “ums” and “ahs,” but Burnham shows a sociolinguist’s ear for the cadence and flow of 21st-century girl-speak, and Fisher (who dubbed adorable young Agnes in all three “Despicable Me” movies, but will almost certainly be new to audiences) delivers his dialogue so naturally, you’d swear she’s making it up as she goes along.

Using the three-beep countdown of the PhotoBooth app as a kind of audio motif throughout, the film opens with Kayla recording a motivational YouTube video hardly anyone will watch. “The hard part of being yourself is that it’s not easy,” she stammers into her laptop camera, imploring people to “like” what she has to say, and signing off with a cutesy “Gucci!” catchphrase. When I was Kayla’s age, I poured most of my free time into publishing a newspaper nobody read. Today, kids (technically “teens,” since 13 is the first of those gloriously awkward years) chase YouTube and Instagram validation instead.

“Nobody uses Facebook anymore,” quips Kayla’s prettier, more popular classmate Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), whose birthday party falls just a few days shy of both girls’ middle-school graduation. “So my mom said to invite you, so this is me doing that,” writes Kennedy — voted “best eyes” by her classmates, though how could they have noticed, when her eyes are constantly glued to her smartphone? Kayla is equally obsessed with her devices, and the movie pretty much nails it when she gets up one morning, does her makeup, and then crawls back in to bed to take her first Snapchat selfie of the day.

“Eighth Grade” unfolds over those final days of that ignominious year, during which Kayla coaches her nonexistent YouTube subscribers on such skills as confidence and “putting yourself out there,” while wrestling to put her own advice into practice. At Kennedy’s party, she retreats to an empty room and plays with her phone, cutting her finger on her shattered iPhone screen — an ingenious visual metaphor for everything her generation is dealing with these days, and yet, wonderfully understated at the same time. Burnham doesn’t feel the need to veer off into ultra-dark Harmony Korine territory, an envelope that films such as Fien Troch’s “Home” and Catherine Hardwicke’s “Thirteen” have pushed clear off the table in recent years.

Though so much of “Eighth Grade” feels achingly honest, Burnham can’t help but fall back on a few of the stock coming-of-age-movie clichés: Kayla’s obsessed with a classmate named Aiden (Luke Prael), for whom the soundtrack swells and the world moves in slow-motion every time he appears, and she barely notices Gabe (Jake Ryan), the weird kid who wants more than naked selfies or a quick trip to third base from her. Like Dawn Wiener in Todd Solondz’s infinitely harsher “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” Kayla wants the validation of a cute guy’s attention. But it’s not like she’s going to marry either of these boys anyway.

Fisher has the unique challenge of making an average girl seem exceptional, tapping into that universally identifiable sense of vulnerability that shows plain as acne at that age. Somehow, Kayla escapes without a single person asking what she wants to be when she grows up (although an early montage shows her doodling googly-eyed anime characters into her spiral notebook and showing a certain aptitude in art class), and that’s one stress she can defer to next year, when she hits ninth grade. Middle school, as Burnham shows it, has changed a lot since most of us were there: Where previous generations learned to duck-and-cover in the event of a Russia-launched nuclear attack, these kids roll their eyes during a school-shooting drill.

Consider this: Neither Kayla nor Kennedy had been born yet when the movie “Mean Girls” was released, and they’re both entirely too self-absorbed to be proactively cruel to their classmates anyway. “Eighth Grade” isn’t about bullying; it’s about how hard we are on ourselves at that age. At one point, Kayla opens a shoebox time capsule she addressed “to the coolest girl in the world” two years earlier, and seems not to recognize the girl whose hopes and dreams it contains. It’s too bad she can’t send a message in the opposite direction, reassuring her insecure younger self that “It Gets Better.”

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (competing), Jan. 19, 2018. Running time: 93 MIN.

• Production: An A24 release. Producers: Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, Lila Yacoub, Christopher Storer.
• Crew: Director, writer: Bo Burnham. Camera (color): Andrew Wehde. Editor: Jennifer Lilly. Music: Anna Meredith.
• With: , Daniel Zolghadri, Fred Hechinger, Imani Lewis, Luke Prael, Catherine Oliviere. Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan

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Review: Bo Burnham’s ‘Eighth Grade’ is a beautifully honest portrait of adolescent girlhood

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At a few points in “Eighth Grade,” Bo Burnham’s sharp, sensitive and enormously affecting new movie, you might feel the urge to snatch the phone out of someone’s hand and hurl it against the wall. (No, not the guy texting in the seat next to you, although you have my blessing.) I’m thinking mainly of the scene in which a shy middle schooler named Kayla Day (a terrific Elsie Fisher) bravely initiates a casual conversation with two popular girls in her class. They offer one-word replies and keep their eyes on their phones, hoping to get this strained interaction over with as quickly as possible.

The girls aren’t bullies; they regard Kayla not with hatred so much as embarrassment and indifference. In their still-developing young minds, ignoring this desperate loser might be the kindest thing they could do. They’re wrong, and on more than one count. Kayla may be shy, self-conscious and tongue-tied — hardly a rare condition for a kid her age — but it doesn’t take more than a few seconds for us to see how, like, totally not a loser she really is.

Sadly, the only other person in Kayla’s world who sees this doesn’t count: It’s her father, Mark (Josh Hamilton), who has raised her alone for many years, and who keeps her hooked up to a steady IV drip of affection. He’s understanding enough to know that his daughter is at that moody age when a parent is the last person you’d want to confide in. But whenever Mark gently reaches across the generational chasm (“I think you’re so cool,” he gushes at the dinner table), Kayla scowls in exasperation and slaps on her headphones. She, too, isn’t above using personal technology to tune out the world.

One of the pleasures of Kayla’s story is that it invites us to tune out along with her. At once wryly observational and dreamily empathetic, “Eighth Grade” draws us back again and again into Kayla’s digital cocoon, sometimes cranking up the music to entrancing effect (she’s especially fond of classic Enya) and allowing the bright light of her smartphone screen to lull us into a trance. But Burnham knows that Kayla can’t hide from the world forever, and he spends the rest of this intimate, emotionally expansive movie trying to coax her out.

The story unfolds over the last week of school, though it could be any week in most respects. Kayla moves anxiously through the crowded hallways, talking to no one, staring down at the floor. (The camera often follows her from behind, as if it were stalking and shielding her at the same time.) She finds herself distracted by a good-looking classmate named Aiden (Luke Prael), though it takes some time for her to work up the nerve to talk to him.

She’s voted the “most quiet” girl in her class, which is of course the most mortifying public recognition a quiet girl could receive. The thing is, Kayla isn’t even really that quiet. It’s just that precious few people have taken the time to get to know her and unleash her inner chatterbox. At home, she records personal videos for her YouTube channel, where she doles out enthusiastic, stammering advice on subjects like “being yourself” and “having confidence.”

Kayla, needless to say, isn’t great at taking her own advice. The deeper irony here is that Burnham, a 27-year-old actor, musician and comedian making his writing-directing debut, himself came to fame as a teenage YouTube star, earning millions of clicks and stirring occasional controversy with his satirical, smart-alecky videos.

One of the key themes of “Eighth Grade” is the degree to which the Internet has warped, and tainted, the experience of growing up. Middle school may be one of those universally crummy experiences, when life is cruel and kids are crueler. But most of us were at least fortunate enough to endure it without having to worry about the specific humiliations of social media, to say nothing of the temptations of sexting and online pornography, to name a few of the issues that the story brushes up against.

But if Burnham at times seems to be biting the hand that feeds him, he happily manages to do so without wagging his own finger. “Eighth Grade” never feels like a simplistic broadside against technology, bullying, helicopter parenting or any other issues of the week. Nor does it traffic in either the bright, mock-Darwinian humor of “Mean Girls” (2004) or the corrosively dark comedy of “Welcome to the Dollhouse” (1995), to name two very different generationally beloved portraits of adolescent girlhood. More than anything, this emotionally unsparing but never-punishing movie feels like the work of someone who kept his eyes and ears wide open.

There’s a touch of the cultural anthropologist to Burnham’s approach. Some of his throwaway observations, like the shot of a kid sniffing a highlighter pen in class, feel like something out of a wildlife documentary. His approach surely accounts for the movie’s remarkably naturalistic ear for dialogue; it’s been a while since I’ve heard a screenplay so fully master the awkward, hesitant rhythms of everyday teen-speak. (Speaking of language: The expletives in the dialogue are almost certainly what triggered a ridiculous R rating for one of the few theatrical releases it would actually benefit teenagers to seek out.)

Burnham and his ensemble pay careful attention to the placement of every “uh,” “like” and “you know,” a touch that never feels like mannerism or overwhelms the characters’ distinct speech patterns. Among the young actors making strong impressions here are Emily Robinson, Imani Lewis and Daniel Zolghadri as three high school students who briefly take Kayla under wing, and Jake Ryan as Gabe, a smart, easygoing kid who genuinely seems to enjoy Kayla’s company.

The viewer is likely to feel similarly, which is no small credit to Fisher’s funny, watchful and utterly persuasive performance. Kayla may be the kind of person no one seems to notice, but Burnham gives us no choice: He and his cinematographer, Andrew Wehde, bring the camera so close to Kayla that we can register every nervous laugh, every deer-in-the-headlights stare, every bad flareup of acne. And Fisher neither wilts under the camera’s scrutiny nor succumbs to the temptation to stare it down. She gives precise form and delicate feeling to emotions and experiences that, despite the specificity of the circumstances, most everyone will recognize.

It’s amazing how little and how much can happen in a week, or even a moment. Kayla goes to a pool party where almost everyone, including the birthday girl, ignores her. She sings karaoke. She nearly gets herself into trouble, but is quick to assert and protect herself. She mourns the loss of childhood, but realizes that even the biggest setbacks will soon be distant memories. She realizes, not a minute too soon, that her dad is actually pretty cool. It’s in the subtle braiding of these moments, of the banal and the revelatory, that the truth of this lovely, heartbreaking movie quietly asserts itself: It’s all no big deal, and it all adds up to everything.

------------

‘Eighth Grade’

Rating: R, for language and some sexual material

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Playing: Opens July 13 at the Landmark, West Los Angeles

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Movie Review – Eighth Grade (2018)

April 26, 2019 by Matt Donato

Eighth Grade , 2018.

Directed by Bo Burnham. Starring Josh Hamilton, Daniel Zolghadri, Elsie Fisher, and Emily Robinson.

A teenager tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth-grade year before leaving to start high school.

Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade  earns a place at the kiddie’s table with Felix Thompson’s King Jack . Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ The Kings Of Summer . Harmony Korine’s Kids (delivery, not extreme content). Mature, relatable childhood stories voiced by age-appropriate players. A24 has found an inspired collaborator in Mr. Burnham, who painstakingly transports audiences back to their most knee-buckling adolescent memories. Tweeny actors reenacting your worst middle school memories. Never have I seen a more adorable, awkward and heartfelt film that made me want to cringe into oblivion in the best way possible. Reality smacks you hard, and bless Mr. Burnham for roll-calling every exorcised squirm to the front of the class. Age be damned.

Elsie Fisher stars as shy protagonist Kayla, who’s kept her head angled downward most of her pre-high school career. You wouldn’t peg Kayla a “Quietest Student” superlative winner by the “instructional” YouTube vlogs she records, but on-camera Kayla flaunts an altered personality. In person, she’s intimidated by the slightest form of social interaction – but that’s all going to change. Kayla makes it her mission to ditch comfort, climb social ladders and try to avoid being embarrassed by her father Mark (Josh Hamilton) as often as possible. You remember how hard it was being a kid, right? Get ready to relive all that angst and self-loathing once again.

Burnham deviates from his stand-up tactics but retains every bit of signature existential anxiety. His vision for Eighth Grade resonates how little children know about the world and the dwelling on small insignificances like apocalyptic doombringing. “Things get better,” we’re repeatedly reminded. That doesn’t diminish the severity and suffocation of interacting with a crush, wearing your one-piece to a bikini-filled pool party or doing something the popular clique might exploit (PTSD flashbacks to feeling so helplessly out of place). From dramatic failures like gifting an “uncool” birthday present to wearing off-brand of clothing that could instigate unsolicited mockery, it’s all here – so wonderfully amplified by a 13-ish-year-old’s unique position.

In line with Burnham’s desire to challenge his audience (no matter the medium), Eighth Grade does not shy away from hot-button topics or extreme discomfort. Maybe as theater classmates with bullet hole makeup aid in school shooting response training, maybe as high schooler Riley (Daniel Zolghadri) inappropriately urges “Truth Or Dare” with Kayla in his backseat. The latter a paralyzing reminder of what it means to feel helpless, wronged and apologetic over something that heaps blame on an innocent party (callbacks to consent, slut-shaming and more burn from the inside). When “kids being kids” becomes more about forcing a change to “norms” that shouldn’t be. Bless little miss Fisher as she sullenly diverts eye contact and sells the discomfort that fills every inch of dead air in Riley’s parked car. You’ll want to look away, and with good reason. That’s intended.

With no overstatement, I must profess how Fisher nails every pre-deep-sigh beat of this anxious paranoia bomb. Dialogue spaced between “ums” and “likes,” posture that of a girl struggling to pull strength from inside herself. She’s the child you immediately want to protect from the minute she’s shown daydreaming during a Sex Ed video (while a student masturbates in the darkened classroom next to her, drawn into his t-shirt like a turtle). Whether researching her first “how to perform oral sex” YouTube video or ogling basketball hottie Aiden while “too cool for school” music blares in the background (rom-com absurdity on an elementary level), it’s how each of these scenarios finishes that defines Fisher’s performance. An uttered compliment gone unheard, or a mortified glance when dad swings open her bedroom door, or utter defeat at the hand of zero confidence. Shameless youth, overblown ramifications.

The two most important relationships that define Kayla are with Josh Hamilton’s “lame” single dad and the young daughter’s iPhone. Hamilton portrays a new-gen father dealing with Friday night dinners where Kayla would rather double-tap Instagram photos than converse during mealtime. Mark’s parental representation is what gut-punch final scenes of warmth are made of – supportive and warm – but Burnham’s capturing of Kayla and her phone still takes center stage. The way cinematography twirls as Kayla assumes “Selfie Mode” frames technology and its user as a romantic drama might swirl around two lovers embracing. Phones prominently define every scene, most times as actors distractedly text or play mobile games. Devices become characters, more than just props. The radiating glow of screens a constant light source as Burnham captures how technology has shifted social developments while fathers like Mark must adapt to this new all-access, always plugged in lifestyle – and why that may or may not be a healthy switch.

Eighth Grade rides a nerve-chewing rollercoaster that repositions early stages of maturity and updates conversations based on what’s presently most important. A reshaping of how children interact (online, not in person) and the ability for young girls to feel empowered in their own skin. Remember: Burnham hasn’t cast older actors who’ve experienced further than their characters. There’s an honesty in every action and a sense that performers like Elsie Fisher are living out their lives with us peering in. Bo Burnham unpacks coming-of-age thorniness as a means of readdressing how we act while also bridging the gap between generations that are growing farther and farther out of touch. But most importantly? Eighth Grade is a testament to embracing one’s true self over filtered-and-staged to hell avatars worth nothing more than online “Likes” – no matter what some sneers-and-scoffs girl named Kennedy thinks.

Flickering Myth Rating –  Film: ★★★★ / Movie: ★★★★

Feel free to follow Matt Donato on Twitter ( @ DoNatoBomb ) – if you dare.

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• DVD & Streaming

Eighth Grade

• Comedy , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

• July 13, 2018
• Josh Hamilton as Mark; Daniel Zolghadri as Riley; Elsie Fisher as Kayla; Emily Robinson as Olivia; Luke Prael as Aiden; Jake Ryan as Gabe; Catherine Oliviere as Kennedy

Home Release Date

• October 9, 2018

Distributor

Movie review.

Middle school is awkward. Not only are boys and girls coming into their own and learning who they are, but they have to learn about themselves while others watch and observe, too.

And sometimes that can be … embarrassing? Confusing? Annoying? All of the above?

Kayla Day is in eighth grade, and she understands. She feels all the things. What do I do if I like a boy? How do I make friends? Why is my dad so weird? These are the questions she’s figuring out with the help of her YouTube channel, making videos that reach out to her audience (or lack thereof) about the tough stuff of real life.

The only problem is that real life and what you put on social media aren’t always the same thing. Not every picture is perfect, not every boy likes you, and sometimes situations can be downright scary.

And as Kayla navigates her last year in middle school, she’ll learn exactly what it means to be herself.

Positive Elements

Even though Kayla struggles to be the person she encourages others to be online, she still has a lot of positive, transparent and encouraging messages to share. She even makes a list of how to be proactive when it comes to making positive changes in her life.

Kayla talks about what it looks like to be yourself, which means not changing who you are to impress others. She admits this can be hard and encourages anyone watching her videos to ignore the people who are mean and negative. She also encourages others to put themselves out there, to choose confidence, and to respect and love who they are.

Some other students try to pressure Kayla into compromising choices, including one involving a sexual situation, but she stands her ground and doesn’t fall prey to that manipulation. Kayla slowly learns to love who she is, too. But the road to genuine self-acceptance is still a painful one for her at times. Along the way, Kayla also forces herself to step outside of her comfort zone, choosing to be brave in difficult social situations.

Kayla’s dad, Mark, is a genuinely nice (if often awkward) guy who loves his daughter. He always asks her questions, wants to know how she is doing emotionally and encourages her to be brave in her own skin. In one late night conversation after Kayla burns a box of her middle school memories containing “all of her hopes and dreams,” Mark affirms Kayla by telling her that he loves her and that he is “so unbelievably happy” that he gets to be her dad. He repeatedly communicates, in various ways, that she is growing into a kind, caring and compassionate young woman.

Spiritual Elements

Kayla prays one night, asking God to give her one good day in exchange for multiple bad days somewhere in the future. Her prayer is simple (there’s no “amen” at the end), perhaps a bit self-focused, but sincere. She apparently hasn’t had much spiritual guidance, but she seems to have a high opinion of the Lord. Another friend admits to believing in God as well.

Sexual Content

Kalya finds out that the boy she has a crush on, Aiden, broke up with his girlfriend after she refused to send him nude photos. Kayla sees this as an opportunity and tells Aiden she has her own dirty photos. This piques his interest, and he crudely asks her if she’s good at performing oral sex. After the eighth grader says yes—which is a lie—she goes home to research what it is and how it’s performed. Kayla (and the audience) sees a woman with a prosthetic anatomical device, and we hear her using sexual terms to describe it. Before things get any more graphic than that, however, Kayla closes her computer. Another scene tells us she’s still trying to figure out how oral sex works (a banana is involved), but her father interrupts her. She also pretends to kiss Aiden by kissing her hand.

A boy is caught masturbating in class. (We see motions as he hides underneath his oversized shirt.) Kids learn about their genitals in a health class. Some girls wear short shorts, and others wear bikinis. Boys and men are shown shirtless in their swimming trunks and boxers. A young boy flexes in front of a mirror. A middle school girl is pressured by a male high school senior to take her shirt off. (She doesn’t comply.) Teens flirt with one another and talk about nude photos. Someone is called a “pervert.”

Violent Content

During an active shooter drill, a man pretends to shoot middle school students. A boy says he wishes there would be a school shooting. Someone makes a harsh comment concerning a deceased classmate.

Crude or Profane Language

God’s name is misused more than 10 times, occasionally paired with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is misused once. The f-word is uttered about 10 times. Other vulgarities include “s—,” “d—,” “a–hole,” “b–ch” and “p—y.” Someone uses the profane acronym “LMFAO” on social media.

Drug and Alcohol Content

A young boy sniffs a marker.

Other Negative Elements

In a well-intended, but misguided, effort to give Kayla space, her father allows her to ride home with a group of high school seniors. She is eventually left alone in the car with one of those much older boys, putting her in a compromising and manipulative situation. (Afterward, we see her crying hysterically.)

Kayla has unlimited internet access on her Macbook and her iPhone. She researches whatever she wants to online (including sexually themed questions, as noted above), with no restrictions. Elsewhere, Kayla’s father asks her to put her phone down so he can talk with her. She does so, but only if he’ll allow her time on social media afterward, she says. Other scenes include Kayla yelling at her dad and being frustrated as he fails to understand her.

A boy constantly makes flatulent noises to interrupt teachers and make others laugh. A young boy flips back his eye lids. Girls are both mean and passive aggressive.

There are moments in this film that feel strinkingly real. The awkard tensions, the changing hormones, the anxieties, the pressure to fit in. In an interview with IndieWire Studio , director Bo Burnham said that a “regular day to an eighth grader feels like life and death.” We see (and hear) that idea played out on screen: There’s dramatic music when a crush walks in, a long pause before someone can find the words to speak, frequent harsh langague. All the awkwardness of early adolescence is here.

Yet, it left me wondering why so much of it had to be there. It’s not that these things don’t happen in middle school; for some they do. But if our kids have already been exposed to moments that rob their innocence, do we need a movie that graphically documents those traumas again?

And what about those who haven’t yet endured those experiences? Might this movie’s depiction of some risky behaviors actually awaken a curiosity to dig up information that is best left underground?

That’s not to say everything in Eighth Grade is problematic. It’s not. Kayla is someone you want to stand behind. She’s the kind of girl you would have wanted as a friend in middle school. She makes some beautiful discoveries and is in many ways still delightfully, wonderfully, innocent in the end. And in a compromising situation that could have gone much worse, she stands her ground. Bravo, Kayla.

As the film progresses, she also develops a more loving relationship with her father and chooses friends who accept her for who she is. Kayla gradually realizes that bad moments, even bad years , don’t last forever. Things get better. There is hope beyond this awkward season.

If only that hope wasn’t burdened with blushworthy sexual content, excessisive language and seriously awkward moments that make me remember how much I don’t miss eighth grade.

Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).

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Eighth grade.

• Parents say (47)
• Kids say (58)

Based on 58 kid reviews

cringe movie

Report this review, incredibly awkward and cringy movie, one of the cringest movies i’ve ever seen.

This title has:

Unrelatable

Incredible movie, what cuties tried to be, so perfectly relatable.

EIGHTH GRADE

"poignant coming-of-age tale marred by some crude content".

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: Young female protagonist is too involved with her smartphone and other computer devices that it has created some emotional distance between she and her father, but the situation is resolved positively and girl must stand up to bullies.

More Detail:

EIGHTH GRADE is a winsome, touching slice-of-life portrait of an eighth-grade girl in her last week of the school year before high school. An absorbing entertainment, EIGHTH GRADE has a strong moral worldview with a poignant father-daughter relationship at its core, but this is undercut by strong foul language and by crude sexual references among the movie’s teenage characters, although the female heroine ultimately makes wise choices.

The movie’s story follows a 13-year-old girl named Kayla (Elsie Fisher), an awkward, insecure, slightly overweight eighth grader. Each day, Kayla makes YouTube videos each day about various aspects of her life that almost no one watches. She’s obsessed with her cellphone, constantly surfing Facebook and Instagram to “like” other people’s lives and posts. However, Kayla doesn’t have any friends, nor does she have any things of her own to share.

The movie takes place during Kayla’s last week of eighth grade. Kayla looks forward to life in high school, even though she realizes that all her hopes for junior high went nowhere. She lives alone with her father, who briefly mentions that her mom left them when she was a baby. Sadly, Kayla is too involved with her computer devices. So, she maintains a comically high level of sullen silence toward her father. This breaks her father’s heart, because he really tries to be a good and engaged father, but Kayla keeps locking him out of her thoughts and life.

In the story, Kayla navigates her way through an awkward pool party for a snobbish female classmate’s birthday. She also spends a triumphant day “shadowing” and hanging out with an older high school girl at her future high school while she engages in awkward encounters with boys. Through all this, Kayla is afraid to discuss her most difficult moments with her father for much of the movie, but, thankfully, she usually makes the right moral decisions at each key turn.

Ultimately, EIGHTH GRADE is an extremely intimate look into the mind of an average girl in an era when social media and cellphones have destroyed much of human interaction. It’s funny enough to be classified officially as a comedy, but it’s also very heartfelt and touching in many places. Furthermore, there’s an almost documentary feel in the way that Writer/Director Bo Burnham (a star standup comedian making his filmmaking debut here) shoots the events.

Interesting techniques abound in EIGHTH GRADE. Burnham uses extreme zoom-in shots to put the viewer in the shoes of Kayla at her most awkward moments. He then pulls far away at moments that are emotionally devastating, moments that leave Kayla as alone onscreen as she feels inside. The movie’s musical score is also unique. Composer Anna Meredith veers between barely perceptible keyboard strokes at pensive moments and loud, overbearing keyboard squawks at moments that represent when Kayla is overwhelmed by life.

Sadly, EIGHTH GRADE has a significant amount of strong foul language. There are also several crude sexual references in the movie. At one point, for example, there’s a situation where the naïve and innocent Kayla is introduced to a crude sexual term. When she investigates what the term means while looking it up on the Internet, she is shocked to see what it means. The situation ends with a couple crude jokes about the term.

Despite this edgy content, Kayla eventually puts down her computer devices and develops a stronger relationship with her father and learns to stand up for herself to bullies as well. She ultimately avoids any sexual behavior and takes up with an innocent boy. Best of all, Kayla expresses a strong belief in God and even prays to Him at a vital turning point in the movie, with good results.

Ultimately, EIGHTH GRADE shows that, despite all the moral garbage in much of today’s popular teenage culture, a morally positive, more godly lifestyle brings true happiness.

Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.

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Movie Review: Eighth Grade (2018)

• Howard Schumann
• Movie Reviews
• No responses
• --> August 11, 2018

All I remember from eighth grade was being shunted from the Glee Club to the Stamp Club because, as my music teacher said, “it would be a better fit for you.” Better fit or not, it interfered with my plan to be a show biz star in the mold of Al Jolson. Unlike awkward pre-teen Kayla (Elsie Fisher, voice of Agnes in “ Despicable Me 2 ”) in 27-year-old director Bo Burnham’s coming-of-age comedy/drama Eighth Grade , however, I had no smartphone, Snapchat, Instagram, Youtube, or other social media with which to direct my existential dismay. Withdrawn, insecure, and lacking in self-esteem, Kayla is in her last week of eighth grade before she tackles the dreaded high school, even more of a challenge.

Voted by her classmates as “most quiet,” Kayla does not talk much and apparently has no friends. She feels emboldened enough, however, to offer a series of instructional videos on Youtube called “Kayla’s Corner,” in which she gives advice to others on such subjects as being yourself, putting yourself “out there,” and turning pretend confidence into the real thing. Stumbling her way through her delivery with a variety of “ums,” “ers,” “likes,” “you knows,” and “whatevers,” (the way the director must believe all teens speak), the videos offer some good lessons. While they may not be reaching their intended demographic, they certainly hit home to an audience of one, namely Kayla.

Living with her divorced, overly solicitous dad Mark (Josh Hamilton, “ The Meyerowitz Stories ”), the sullen Kayla resists anything more than one-word answers to her dad’s attempts at conversation, preferring to immerse herself deeply in her laptop and smartphone. She reluctantly agrees to attend classmate Kennedy’s (Catherine Oliviere, “The Weaver of Raveloe”) birthday pool party after an invitation from Kennedy’s mom (Missy Yager, “ Manchester by the Sea ”), but ultimately probably wishes she hadn’t. The condescending Kennedy sneers at Kayla’s birthday present of a board game which Kayla insists is a lot of fun, but fun doesn’t seem to be present at that moment.

Her stoop-shouldered dumpy look and the fact that she is the only one without a bikini unfortunately does not attract much attention from the boys, except for Kennedy’s cousin Gabe (Jake Ryan, “ Moonrise Kingdom ”), who is into underwater game playing. Kayla has her eye on Aiden (Luke Prael, “Boarding School”), but the boy who was voted “best eyes,” does not have his best eyes turned in her direction. She perks up later when, at a high school orientation, she is assigned to be high school student Olivia’s (Emily Robinson, “Private Life”) “shadow” and feels confident enough to go to the mall with Olivia and her friends Trevor (Fred Hechinger, “Alex Strangelove”) and Aniyah (Imani Lewis, “Star” TV series).

The good feelings are abruptly derailed, however, when she catches a glimpse of her overbearing father peering at her from an upper level like a hovering guardian angel. Her decision to turn down dad’s offer of a ride home, however, leads to an even more dicey encounter with Olivia’s friend Riley (Daniel Zolghadri, “ Ready Player One ”), a “truth or dare” aficionado. Remarkably performed with authenticity by Elsie Fisher, we applaud when Kayla takes some halting steps towards maturity as exhibited in her conversation with her dad late in the film. Though their talk lacks the substance of the similar father-son conversation at the end of “ Call Me by Your Name ,” it is still an opening for both to expand their relationship.

Eighth Grade is a sweet and touching film that presents the characters and situations as they are without judgment or evaluation. (Unfortunately, eighth graders cannot see the film without a parent because of an R-rating for language, though that might stimulate a dialogue between parent and child). While Kayla comes across as innocent and needy and we root for her, her character lacks the nuance and depth that could have taken the film to another level.

While we know that it is a struggle for teens to fit in and there have been reported incidents of anxiety and depression among middle school students, Burnham’s portrayal of the eighth grade as being somewhat akin to Dante’s Inferno ignores the fact that there are other things on the mind of many adolescents besides being obsessed with their “devices,” and that true self-awareness can only begin when you take steps to become involved in things larger than yourself.

Tagged: daughter , father , relationship , school , teenager

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

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‘The First Omen’ Review: Damien’s New Origin Story Conceives of a Majestically Messy Franchise Future

Alison foreman.

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What to expect when you’re expecting … the Antichrist?

Filmmaker Arkasha Stevenson delivers her gleefully gruesome answer to that increasingly popular question in 20 th Century’s terrifying and triumphant “The First Omen.” It’s a nominally named soft franchise reboot and the vastly superior (if accidental) answer to Neon’s “Immaculate” with Sydney Sweeney , also in theaters now.

In “ The First Omen ,” Nell Tiger Free stars as Margaret, an American nun in training come to teach at an ill-fated orphanage in Rome. Serving under a strict mother superior (Sônia Braga), Margaret was called to the school by a cardinal she’s known since childhood (Bill Nighy) and soon runs into a troubled girl (Nicole Sorace) who oddly reminds her of herself. Paradigm-shifting for Margaret and “The Omen” franchise, it’s this relationship that makes up the meat of the movie; if you can watch these two talk on a bench, you’ll follow the plot just fine. Related Stories ‘Infested’ Review: French Creature Feature Leaves ‘Evil Dead’ in Nimble and Nightmarish Hands Lewis Hamilton Regretted Turning Down a Role in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’: ‘It Could’ve Been Me!’

Still, for the unindoctrinated, it’s worth knowing the basics. Stevenson’s giallo-inspired (*) prequel takes place just a few months before the start of Richard Donner’s 1976 masterwork. Those classic horror beats — grayer and distinctly more British in pallor — center on a U.S. ambassador, his unlucky wife, and a still pint-sized Son of Satan residing in London.

(*There comes a time in most Rome-set horror movies when you have to ask yourself: Is this supposed to look like a giallo — or is that actress just well-lit and Italian? One such moment arrives about a third of the way into “The First Omen.” As Margaret’s stunning roommate and fellow wannabe nun Luz, played by Maria Caballeler, lounges on her bed, she’s covered in a prismatic pool and it’s definitely giallo.)

Freak accidents, animal attacks, recreational sports injuries, and the occasional aneurysm have punctuated “The Omen” screenwriter David Seltzer’s nostalgic but sometimes fallible and forgettable universe. As radical as the Emmy-winning “Prey” with as many of its own sequel possibilities as the smash hit series midquel “Saw X,” “The First Omen” ticks all the boxes of a justified IP revisitation that arguably should get more chapters becausse it improves what came before it.

From a screenplay co-written by Stevenson, Tim Smith, and Keith Thomas with a story by Ben Jacoby, the unholy conception of Damien Thorn for “The First Omen” doubles as the basis for Stevenson’s feature directorial debut — releasing intense scares at a contraction-like pace, before giving birth to a last act no one could forget. It’s also the rare prequel (sequel, requel, what have you) that fits seamlessly inside the existing franchise and makes tracks toward a chilling new future. In short, it births something new and genuinely scary. Remember when that wasn’t so rare?

Distributed by 20th Century Studios, “The First Omen” is in theaters on Friday, April 5 .

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'Monkey Man' review: Thrilling revenge epic packs a mighty wallop

Dev patel makes his directorial debut with this bloody, ultraviolent action thriller..

A stylish, propulsive, kinetic revenge epic, "Monkey Man" packs a serious punch and marks the auspicious arrival of Dev Patel as a filmmaker.

Patel's breakthrough as an actor came in 2008's "Slumdog Millionaire," his debut film, and he was clearly paying attention to director Danny Boyle at the time. "Monkey Man" takes cues from Boyle, as well as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and other masters, as Patel laces his tale with grit, guts and a streak of ultraviolence. It's an action movie driven by an inner fire.

Patel, who produced, co-wrote and directs "Monkey Man," stars as Kid, a nameless man in a Mumbai-like city who sets out on a journey to exact revenge against the powerful and crooked leaders who killed his mother. But it's more than that, as Patel stages it as a galvanizing us against them tale, about a common man rising up against the mighty and corrupt, and inspiring a movement in his wake.

Kid is a fighter in grungy underground fights where the ropes are actual ropes. He fights underneath a monkey mask and isn't above taking a dive for cash from his promoter, Tiger (Sharlto Copley). He sees it all as part of his bigger plan, going from the literal bottom floor all the way up to the top penthouse suite, where the elite reside.

He works his way into the kitchen of an exclusive high-end restaurant and meets Alphonso (Pitobash Tripathy), who brings him onto the waitstaff at the even more exclusive nightclub inside the building. Kid is a hustler who works every angle to get where he needs to go, and that ultimately leads him to a face off with police chief Rana (Sikandar Kher), the man who killed his mother and burned his village to the ground.

Patel stages his story in pieces, parsing out elements as he goes, first giving us revenge and then explaining the reason behind it. And that revenge is doled out in breakneck style, pulling from movies such as "Kill Bill," "The Raid: Redemption," "Taxi Driver," "Scarface," "Oldboy" and more, and Patel even stages a bathroom brawl that recalls James Cameron's "True Lies." "John Wick" is another influence, so on-the-nose that it gets a namecheck.

But there are no superhero elements in this grounded story of poverty, persistence and the haves and have nots. Patel's Kid is a flesh-and-blood brawler, who gets the snot kicked out of him on more than one occasion and is forced to build himself back up from zero, earning every rung on his ladder back to the top.

As a director, Patel stages fights in thrilling fashion, working with cinematographer Sharone Meir to create a sense of hand-held, back-and-forth action that can feel jarring, disorienting and exhilarating all at once. The punches land, the bruises swell, the blood pools.

While Patel nods to those who came before him, he doesn't feel like an imitator, and he has his own sense of visual style that he distills from his heroes. And he packs a lot of movie into his movie; "Monkey Man" feels like a three hour story stuffed into a two-hour timeframe.

"Monkey Man" is a work of brute force, combining myth, politics and Indian culture into a driving, muscular achievement. Patel proves he has a storyteller's eye and ear, and "Monkey Man" is his revolutionary act of filmmaking.

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'Monkey Man'

Rated R: for strong bloody violence throughout, language throughout, sexual content/nudity and drug use

Running time: 121 minutes

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Someone Like You

Based on the novel by #1 NYTimes bestselling author Karen Kingsbury, "Someone Like You" is an achingly beautiful love story. After the tragic loss of his best friend, a grieving young archit... Read all Based on the novel by #1 NYTimes bestselling author Karen Kingsbury, "Someone Like You" is an achingly beautiful love story. After the tragic loss of his best friend, a grieving young architect launches a search for her secret twin sister. Based on the novel by #1 NYTimes bestselling author Karen Kingsbury, "Someone Like You" is an achingly beautiful love story. After the tragic loss of his best friend, a grieving young architect launches a search for her secret twin sister.

• Tyler Russell
• Karen Kingsbury
• Sarah Fisher
• Lynn Collins
• 13 User reviews
• 5 Critic reviews

• London Quinn …

• Dawson Gage

• Louise Quinn

• Dr. Jenny Allen

• Dr. Jim Allen

• Larry Quinn

• Hannah Smith

• Zoo Manager

• Party guest

• Tennis player

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Robin Lively and Bart Johnson play a married couple in this movie, and they are married in real life.

User reviews 13

• maddieb-76532
• Apr 3, 2024
• How long is Someone Like You? Powered by Alexa
• April 2, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Karen Kingsbury Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 58 minutes

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