Eighth Grade is a 2018 American coming-of-age film written and directed by Bo Burnham. It follows a teenager (Elsie Fisher) who struggles with anxiety but strives to gain social acceptance from her school peers during their final week of eighth grade, and copes by publishing apparently motivational vlogs despite spending much of her time obsessing over social media.
Burnham began writing the screenplay in 2014, initially in an attempt to reflect on his own anxiety and onstage panic attacks he experienced during his stand-up comedy career. Deciding to convey his experience through the protagonist, he also wanted to explore how her generation copes with mental illness, grows up with social media, navigates sexuality and consent, relates to their parents, and develops self-awareness. He aimed for realism, casting actual eighth graders—including Fisher—who influenced his writing and directing. For research, he watched vlogs from teenagers on YouTube, where he also discovered Fisher. On a budget of $2 million, the film was shot over one month in mid-2017 in the New York locations Suffern, West Nyack, and White Plains.
Eighth Grade premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival on January 19 and was given a wide theatrical release in the United States by A24 on July 13. The film was rated R by the MPAA; instead of appealing this decision, A24 and Burnham arranged free all-ages theatrical screenings in every U.S. state to let the intended audience see it.
The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing $14 million domestically. It earned numerous awards and nominations, with Burnham winning both Writers Guild and Directors Guild of America Awards, and Fisher being nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and winning the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor. The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute each named Eighth Grade as one of the 10 best films of 2018, with the former also naming it the year's best directorial debut.
Plot Eighth grader Kayla Day is in her final week at Miles Grove Middle School, a public middle school in a small New York town. She posts motivational vlogs on YouTube about confidence and self-image that receive few to no views. Timid and struggling to make friends at school, she is voted "Most Quiet" by her classmates. Meanwhile, her single father Mark struggles to connect with her and break her reliance on social media. Kayla is invited to popular classmate Kennedy's pool party by Kennedy's mother. At the party, she has a panic attack in the bathroom but eventually goes outside to swim, where she meets Kennedy's nerdy cousin Gabe. After trying to leave early, she has an awkward encounter with her crush Aiden, who encourages her to stay. She overcomes her anxiety and volunteers to partake in karaoke.
After hearing that Aiden broke up with his last girlfriend because she refused to send him nude photos of herself, Kayla lies to Aiden and tells him that she has a folder of explicit photos of herself on her phone, piquing his interest. He asks if she gives blowjobs and she says yes, despite not knowing what he means. She later looks up instructions online and is disgusted by what she finds.
During a high school shadow program, Kayla meets a friendly senior named Olivia who shows her around the school before exchanging phone numbers and inviting her to the mall with some friends. At the mall, Kayla is mortified to see her father spying on the group from afar and orders him to leave.
While giving Kayla a ride home, Olivia's friend Riley initiates an awkward and invasive game of truth or dare, culminating in him removing his shirt and encouraging her to do the same. When she refuses, he becomes angry and claims he was just trying to help her gain some sexual experience. At home, Kayla breaks down and is comforted by Mark. She makes another vlog announcing that she intends to stop making videos, as she is not the confident person she pretends to be and feels unfit to give advice. She opens a time capsule she created for herself in sixth grade and watches a video in which her past self asks about her current friends and love life. After enlisting Mark's help in burning the time capsule, she asks him if she makes him sad. He tells her that she fills him with pride and could never make him sad, prompting her to hug him.
Shortly before graduation, Kayla finally calls out Kennedy for acting indifferent and dismissive toward Kayla's attempts at befriending her. She later has dinner at Gabe's house and they enjoy their time together. Kayla makes a new time capsule that she and Mark bury in the backyard, and leaves a video message for her future high school senior self, encouraging her to persevere through tough times.
Cast Elsie Fisher as Kayla Day Josh Hamilton as Mark Day Emily Robinson as Olivia Catherine Oliviere as Kennedy Graves Jake Ryan as Gabe Luke Prael as Aiden Wilson Daniel Zolghadri as Riley Fred Hechinger as Trevor Imani Lewis as Aniyah
Themes The film explores anxiety. Professor Julianna W. Miner, writing in 2018 about Eighth Grade, reflects that 22% of teenagers were struggling with depression and anxiety, and teenage girls were committing suicide at higher rates in 2015 than they were in the previous 40 years. The anxiety depicted is typical in middle school, but according to reporter Valerie Strauss, also reflects life in 2018 where people of all ages see a "cacophony of indifference and downright meanness". The words "um" and "like" in the screenplay also reflect "the process of struggling", rather than the characters' lack of intelligence.
Critic Owen Gleiberman wrote that Eighth Grade was a trailblazer in examining youth who never knew a world without the Internet, touching on sexting as well. CBS News also commented that besides "the usual teen angst and acne", Eighth Grade depicts how Kayla spends a great deal of time online and engaging in text messaging. This reflects general trends in Generation Z, in which 94% of youth have used smartphones by age 14. A 2018 U.S. poll found that 45% of teenagers reported being "almost constantly" online. 24% called its effects "mostly negative", while 45% characterized it as "neither negative nor positive".
Elsie Fisher said that "social media is almost religious" for Kayla. Burnham said, "Social media has made me think differently as a person [...] it's made me more anxious, I think." Professor Jean Twenge also connected an increase in Internet usage to a decline in juvenile mental health. Gleiberman called the depiction an examination of "overwhelming—and, I would argue, unprecedented—woe that teenagers today can feel". Author Robert Barker contrasted Eighth Grade to earlier coming-of-age films such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and Mean Girls (2004). Rather than work through cliques, Barker wrote, Kayla and others are on "a digital war of all against all, preening, pretending, and pontificating as much to themselves as to an anonymous audience". Barker also saw the sexting between characters as representing their obliviousness to lost innocence. NPR interpreted the impact of the Internet during maturation as "one of the key subjects of Eighth Grade", commenting on how many people may not remember the age fondly, but social media has added complications. NPR added Kayla is still able to grow despite great challenges.
According to critic Kyle Buchanan, "The biggest mystery to ... [Kayla] is the opposite sex", considering her interest in Aiden and taking online lessons about fellatio. Journalist Chris O'Falt suggested Kayla is not truly ready for sex, but simply is "pressured to barter [her] sexuality for social acceptance". Time mentioned Kayla's claim to Aiden that she has nude selfies as among the "classic middle-school indignities" Eighth Grade depicts.
Burnham also criticized American sex education for not exploring sexual consent, as reflected in the "truth or dare" scene. Although Kayla is shown in a sex education class earlier in the film, she does not know how to react when Riley sexually coerces her, and apologizes to him for rejecting his advances. Film critics connected the scene with the Me Too movement,Examples: though it was written before the movement began. At festival screenings, moviegoers were visibly uncomfortable and yelled during the scene.
The story also explores Kayla's relationship with her father, a member of Generation X from whom she is breaking away, exhibiting typical behavior for her age. His attempts to communicate with her are frustrated by her fixation on her phone. Journalist Sonia Rao called Mark "the only constant presence in her life"; he is devoted to Kayla and tells her he is proud of her.
Production Development
As a touring comedian since 2009, Bo Burnham began to suffer from panic attacks related to his performances in 2013. While his main intention was to write a story about anxiety, he chose the setting of eighth grade because of his perspective that "anxiety makes [him] feel like a terrified 13-year-old". He also reflected on his notion that eighth grade is a crucial year for forming self-awareness: "I wanted to talk about anxiety and what it feels like to be alive right now, and what it is to be unsure and nervous. That felt more like middle school than high school to me. I think the country and the culture is going through an eighth grade moment right now."
Burnham was also inspired by seeing a young girl in a mall taking selfies alone, leading him to believe she was concerned about her appearance. Given his career started with producing YouTube videos, he also wanted to explore the life of a character whose videos have very small audiences. Work on the screenplay began in 2014, under the working title of The Coolest Girl in the World. Kayla was not the sole protagonist in an initial draft of the screenplay, but Burnham decided to focus on her because her voice felt the truest. He decided the protagonist would be female after watching YouTube vlogs in which he observed that "the boys talk about Minecraft and the girls talk about their souls [...] probably half because girls are just actually maturing more quickly and half because culture asks way deeper questions of young women earlier than men". He also liked the idea of a female protagonist to avoid projecting his own personal memories of eighth grade as a male.
Burnham watched YouTube videos to help him write dialogue representing Generation Z. His personal views on the differences between Generation Z and its predecessors inspired a scene where the character of Trevor theorizes that access to social media at an early age molded the generation's minds. Kayla and Mark's relationship is based on Burnham's relationship with his mother. He viewed a teenager's relationship with their parent as a stage where "you want independence, and you also want affirmation".
Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, and A24 produced the movie on a $2 million budget. A24 executive Nicolette Aizenberg called Eighth Grade "personal" to her. Burnham spent years trying to secure financing for the film, confident that his success as a comedian would make him marketable to potential producers. Although he had not directed a feature film before, he was adamant about directing Eighth Grade, and spent the eight months leading up to the shoot reading books such as Sidney Lumet's Making Movies.
Casting