'Eighth Grade' review: Cringe on cringe on cringe

Get ready to squirm in your seat.

Some movies unintentionally make you cringe at times, maybe because of the way a certain line of dialogue was delivered or because of a plot-point that came off as stupid. Other movies will actually try to make you cringe in some moments, as the director might want to make you feel disgusted or uneasy about a certain moment.

Eighth Grade is the only movie I can recall that is constantly trying (and succeeding) to make you cringe from the moment the movie starts to the moment it ends. This one is honestly painful to get through, in all of the right ways.

From director Bo Burnham — yes, the Bo Burnham who is a 27-year-old male comedian, now making a movie about a 13-year-old insecure female — Eighth Grade is an A24 film that stars Elsie Fisher as Kayla; a teenager who is just one week away from being done with middle school forever.

While moving upwards to high school is a scary, nerve-wracking move, Kayla isn’t all that sad to leave eighth grade behind. Middle school hasn’t been all that kind to her as she’s struggled to fit in and make friends. Everyone really just thinks of her as the quiet girl who sits in the back of the classroom and doesn’t say much (don’t tell me your middle school didn’t have at least one of those. They all did).

You would never know that’s Kayla based on her social media accounts, though, as she’s constantly posting YouTube videos talking about just how social and people she could be, if people only got to know her.

Not that it makes all that much of a difference, as no one really watches her videos in the first place. They’re more for her, at this point, which is ironic because she really doesn’t follow the advice that she’s putting out there to the rest of the world.

Kayla’s father Mark (Josh Hamilton) might be the only one who really sees Kayla for who she is — not as someone who’s quiet or someone who’s trying to fit in, but as a very special person who just hasn’t found her niche of friends yet.

The only problem is that Mark isn’t all that good at communicating either. While he’s raising Kayla by himself and is trying his very best, the two often struggle to find some kind of common ground in which they’ll have some kind — any kind, really — of connection.

That means Kayla is pretty much alone out there, which is a pretty scary notion when you have to deal with things like stuck-up popular girls, awkward pool party invitations and men. Don’t even get me started about the men in this movie. Nearly every guy except for Hamilton’s character is a despicable human being, which is once again all too reminiscent of what middle school is actually life.

Of course, your mileage may vary in that department, as there aren’t any two middle school experiences that are exactly alike. There are different tropes and clichés that we might generally fall into, sure, as this is a three-year period in which everyone is going through at least somewhat similar things, but we all have our own stories that we could tell, most of which we probably don’t want to relive.

Eighth Grade works not because everyone is going to directly relate to everything that happens in the movie, then, but because it’s able to find some kind of common ground with us as the audience.

Kayla (or perhaps another character) comes off as such a realistic human being that you’ll see something of yourself in her. Even if you didn’t go to middle school during a time when people were saying ‘that’s Gucci!’ and whatnot, the terrible world of eighth grade is so brutal and unchanging that you can see everything you remember about middle school at work in here.

On that, Bo Burnham deserves mad credit as the director and writer for two separate reasons. One, he was able to create a replica of eighth grade that plays to the audience in a way that’s so realistic it’s honestly painful to watch. There might be a moment or two that comes off a little over-the-top and like it was thrown in there just be outrageous, but almost everything in here feels completely natural and modern day.

Secondly, he’s able to deliver a higher message above all of that. Kayla might talk and act like someone who is in middle school, sure, but the issues she’s struggling with are all things that many of us, as adults, still deal with today.

Still, none of that is easy to sit through. This movie aims to be uncomfortable from start to finish, and it hits that mark to the utmost degree. There’s one particular scene that takes place in the back of a car that almost feels TOO real.

Elsie Fisher deserves all the credit in the world for her performance here, as something tells me we’re about to see her show up in a lot more stuff. It might seem like it wouldn’t be all that difficult of a role for her to take, just because she’s actually the same age as her character and therefore might have similar experiences to Kayla, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Watch the difference in the way she acts during the YouTube videos some makes compared to the scene in the back of the car and you’ll get a sense for just how talented she is.

God bless Josh Hamilton for showing up in this too, because I’m not sure I could have gotten through it without him. He’s the one adult character in Eighth Grade who brings a completely different perspective into the whole thing, as all the middle school drama can start to wear on you after awhile. His character is really quite interesting and his performance is actually great, as his whole arch is leading to this one dramatic scene around a campfire that is nothing short of brilliant.

Eighth Grade is the kind of movie you’re only going to watch once. You absolutely should watch it once, especially if you’re a middle or high schooler yourself, as it’s a good reminder that you’re not alone in the way that you might feel about yourself. That’s important and I don’t want to take anything away from that, which is why I think this is overall a good movie. It’s just not something I ever see myself sitting down to watch again, as the realistic interpretation can just be a little bit too much at certain times.

Watch the trailer for Eighth Grade here and then let us know, in the comments below, what you thought of the film!