'Eighth Grade' Cleverly Captures The Anxiety Of Growing Up Online

Imagine the horror of living through eighth grade on Instagram. The emotional lows and highs, the acne, the failed crushes, the blistery gap between haves and have nots all documented for "everyone" (anyone) to see? Most adults, somehow amnesic to their own raw transition from kid to semi-adult, can’t, won’t or don’t comprehend.

There’s a movie for that. It’s called “Eighth Grade” and its greatest beauty is that it speaks to both kids and their surrounding adults. (But don’t tell the kids that, obviously. And maybe don’t try to watch it with them or discuss it in anyway until, like, October?) It’s not a life-changer of a film, no “Lady Bird” for example, but it’s cleverly made and will ring familiar to those growing up right now.

“Eighth Grade” is about how the sweet and abundantly shy Kayla (a convincing Elsie Fisher) handles the last few weeks of middle school. She may not have an active social life but she produces advice bits for her YouTube channel. Her father (remember Josh Hamilton from “The House of Yes”?) just wants her to be happy and take her earbuds out at the dinner table. But they’ve agreed, on Fridays she can do whatever she wants, and what she wants is to “sail away” on her phone.

From dinner, the film cuts to Enya’s “Orinoco Flow,” on the radio in 1988 when many middle schoolers’ parents were in eighth grade. This is one of many effective shifts between ambient sound, a quippish soundtrack, and a booming score. (Just wait until Kayla’s thin-limbed crush enters a scene.)

Nestled in the cave of her bedroom, Kayla’s face is lit only by her phone. In the background her string of decorative lights pixelates into balls of primary color, a nod to the building blocks of all screen time. She gets lost in a scroll of innocuous images of kids her own age doing goofy things like adding filters to their selfies. For this innocence, adults might breathe a sigh of relief. And yet it’s also incredibly draining to watch Kayla get sucked down a hole of surface obsessions. That, too, is part of the film’s shrewd trappings.

Braving the humiliation of a pool party (which people of all ages should relate to), isn’t just about being the only “how most kids look” girl in a one-piece. The scene, in which Kayla hesitates behind a sliding glass door much like Ben Braddock in “The Graduate,” is about leaving her comfort zone. It’s something she touts in her advice video and later has the courage to do IRL (in real life). What viewers should recognize is that at least for a flash, Kayla doesn’t care about being liked. She's earned a personal best for jumping in.

The plot picks up when Kayla makes an older friend on the buddy day at high school and then gets invited to the mall. In one of those contradictory twists so common for the age, Kayla freaks out when she discovers her dad is spying on her. (She’ll broadcast to the entire world, you imagine her dad thinking, and this feels like an invasion?) He gives Kayla her space and an opportunistic high school boy offers to drive her home. The unsettling interaction that follows is an unfortunate mainstay in girls’ growing up, internet or not.

Like other coming-of-age stories that have become classics, “Eighth Grade” balances what happens to nearly every 13-year-old with what’s happening to 13-year-olds this minute. There’s humorous playacting (an embarrassing banana-in-the-kitchen scene recalls “American Pie”), and playacting with a bleeding edge (a gruff teacher instructs the kids in a live shooter drill). Our culture can’t get enough of this genre because it keeps cranking out kids who turn into adults. And whether we admit it or not, we keep watching stories that help us resolve the most complicated times of our lives.

This surprisingly mature first film was written and directed by someone keen to the internet’s fickle ways, YouTube comedian (and Hamilton, Massachusetts native) Bo Burnham. When he presented it with star Elsie Fisher as IFFBoston’s opening night film in April, he acknowledged something to the effect of “the internet makes us all eighth graders.”

If that’s so, the homework from Burnham’s film is to first take seriously the anxiety of adolescence and then grasp how it’s magnified online. So pay attention, adults. But don't discount the youth. Adults aren’t the only ones who know how to sort the poignant from the banal (or the wheat from the chaff if you’re really old). Kayla has her priorities straight, at least somewhat, because she’s lucky enough to have a parent who’s trying his best, too. I hope it’s not a spoiler to say that they end up having a heartfelt talk -- in real life. And that’s what makes the difference.