Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) is near the end of eighth grade, on her way to high school. She is charming, funny and intelligent, but also deeply insecure and crushed by inextricable loneliness. She has very few friends, if any, and the only other person who seems to notice her existence is her father, Mark (Josh Hamilton), who does his best to support his volatile daughter during what are arguably the most difficult years of any individual’s life, always being a silent source of wisdom and unconditional life through heartbreaks, disappointments and the inevitable anxieties that come with the transitional stages of someone’s life. Kayla comforts herself through the internet – a constant presence on all forms of social media, she is desperate for the recognition that her more popular classmates receive without any effort, and she is even willing to sacrifice her own well-composed morals for the sake of being popular. Yet, what does this search for acceptance ultimately result in, and at what cost does the superficial quest for retrospectively meaningless friendships come? In what way does the confident, positive persona Kayla exudes on social media reflect who she really is?

These are the questions asked by Bo Burnham in his debut directorial feature film, Eighth Grade. I am not entirely sure what this film was trying to be, and whether it was successful at saying whatever it was attempting to convey. Eighth Grade often felt like an overwrought, heavy-handed public service announcement, a feature-length after-school special about the perils of the internet in the life of a generation of insecure, paranoid youngsters who hide behind the protective sheen of the virtual realm. However, it does go a bit deeper than that, and there is something exceptionally moving about this film, and while it may not be a particularly strong film, it has a heart that is firmly in the right place, and a profoundly meaningful message that resonates with many of us, especially those of us growing up in the era of the internet and social media. Burnham, in all honesty, does not make the most impressive cinematic debut, but he certainly does showcase his keen awareness of modern life and the various challenges many people have to endure, especially those that seem almost inconsequential on the surface. Eighth Grade is quite an interesting film, one that seems to mean more than it initially lets on, and it has surprisingly unexpected depth.

Eighth Grade will likely be taken to be in the same league as the recent set of teen films that show the difficulties of navigating high school and adolescence, joining the likes of Easy A, The Edge of Seventeen, Lady Bird and several others in its dedication to portraying the angst-riddled years of ordinary teenagers. Here is a bold claim: Eighth Grade is better than all of them, but only in regards to one central aspect: the accuracy. These films are all excellent, but it wasn’t until Eighth Grade that the visceral awkwardness and the dreadful uncertainty of the modern era were made so evident. Eighth Grade captures the spirit of the period we live in so perfectly, and it presents a precise and unfurnished satire of the lives of those who rely too heavily on social media in their day-to-day routines, often having the virtual world take preference over the real one. This is exactly why Eighth Grade is perhaps slightly weaker a film because it often seems to be an attempt for Burnham to express his own vaguely-misanthropic beliefs about the world, portrayed through the continuous use of relatable references. This is clearly a film that is timely and relevant – but I can’t see this ageing particularly well, and while it is very effective for the current moment, in a few years, when the world has continued to rapidly evolve through the exact technological means used here, Eighth Grade will resonate far less than it does when watching it now. The previously-mentioned films did feature several cultural references, but their stories weren’t built on the novelty of a panoply of contemporary allusions. Don’t get me wrong – Eighth Grade is a good film, and I can only applaud Burnham for making something almost comically bleak in its approach to showing modern life, I just question the practicality of something that will likely be considered a collection of dated pop culture references in a few short years. However, the central theme of growing up is timeless and will certainly make this an effective film for any viewer, because I’m certain that we can all relate to it in some way.

At the core, Eighth Grade is a very good film, and it features an exceptional performance from the lead actress, Elsie Fisher, who is terrific as the insecure Kayla. Her ability to effortlessly oscillate between her character’s different personas – quirky, lovable and charming in private, shy, quiet and introverted in public – was quite astounding, and she really surprised me with the limitless sensitivity of her performance, drawing upon some of the idiosyncratic quirks that define the current generation. What Eighth Grade grade understands that many other teen films don’t is that in order to make a resonant film, you need to have a character who appears to be real. Not every teenage protagonist is a wise-cracking, defiant rebel who always does the right thing eventually, without having to face the consequences. Sometimes, a character can just be mediocre, not having any particularly noteworthy qualities, other than just being an earnest person looking for acceptance and friendship, rather than aspiring to something that is impossibly out of reach. I was very impressed with the maturity displayed by Fisher and more than anything, I found the honesty of her performance extremely refreshing and quite poignant – this is not a character that is being played for laughs, nor an attempt to show the ideal high school rebel: it is a fiercely accurate depiction of an ordinary person living her plain life, being in possession of tenacious dedication and a genuine sense of decency that makes her imperfect, but endlessly likeable and extraordinarily endearing.

Kayla isn’t a very special character, yet through Fisher’s committed performance, and the fact that the film actually seems to care about her character development, rather than making her an outlet for the creator’s own nostalgic insecurities, she becomes one of the year’s most fascinating characters. It is also worth mentioning Josh Hamilton, a character actor who is often relegated to inconsequential supporting roles, who is given the opportunity to shine in Eighth Grade, playing Kayla’s empathetic father, and whether in his small moments as comic relief, or in the introspective moments of father/daughter bonding, Hamilton is excellent. His sympathetic performance is startlingly good, and if Fisher’s performance was a detailed exploration of teenage angst, then Hamilton’s was a strong depiction of the struggles of any parent in raising a child through the uncomfortable, awkward teenage years, helping them find their way. The cast of Eighth Grade is small and almost inconsequential – it revolves almost entirely around Kayla and her father, albeit to a lesser extent. Burnham did well on keeping everything relatively intimate because it allowed this film to flourish as a deeply meaningful character-driven teen comedy that benefits massively from its central performance. If there is one reason to praise Eighth Grade, it is because of Fisher’s exceptional performance, which is single-handedly the most worthwhile aspect of the film.

Eighth Grade, to its credit, does genuinely seem to want to be a truthful portrayal of modern life and the issues, and to suggest that it is inferior to other similar films (as I said before) is a little misguided, because while in the greater picture, I can’t imagine Eighth Grade being as resonant as it is now, I doubt it was made for the intention of being an enduring masterpiece of the genre, because there are dozens of other films with similar thematic content that will remain relevant in the future. Eighth Grade is a film made for the current generation and the fact that this is a film made by someone who is profoundly aware of the issues being faced by the young people of this generation – but sometimes, it loses its direction, mainly because it wants to explore as much as possible, and while this is admirable in itself, because it brings considerable depth, it creates open-ended storylines that are not properly resolved. However, these issues are excusable considering the relative inexperience of the director. Eighth Grade does have the benefit of a director who is not from another generation, but rather the precise generation being represented in the film, so his keen awareness of issues plaguing individuals are quite insightful and bring a lot of nuance to the film. The rise of social media in the lives of teenagers, coupled with the rise in mental health issues and attention surrounding the concept of consent is given attention, and while any of these could have been successful on their own, Burnham tries to look at all of them. Eighth Grade is not a film that intends to be entirely pleasant, and there are moments of profound discomfort, such as a sequence where the tragic trend of school shootings is an important part of the plot – and the fact that the commentary is from the perspective of a drill, which seems to be a part of the everyday life of this characters, to the point of being mundane, is quite startling. The detail present in Eighth Grade is quite significant and helps elevate it above its unavoidably novice execution.

When all is said and done, Eighth Grade is a very good film – it may not be particularly noteworthy, but it is also quite an admirable achievement and a worthwhile addition to the canon of great contemporary films centring on the awful teenage years. Bo Burnham clearly made something that he felt strongly passionate about, and it is clear that this was a cathartic experience for the director, with Eighth Grade telling us quite a bit about his own experiences. It may sometimes be too focused on its central message to register as a particularly strong film, but the message it tells is more than enough to make Eighth Grade quite a powerful film, one that is unrestrained in its commitment to showing the reality many people face. There isn’t much that makes Eighth Grade particularly outside of its potent themes and the powerful central performance, but it is an otherwise effective character-driven high school comedy that is equal parts hilariously funny and tragically sad. It is optimistic, warm and interesting, and it says what it wants to say with great passion and genuine heart, and what it lacks in finesse it makes up for in unhinged authenticity and extraordinary resonance. Real, visceral and an emotionally-powerful ode the teenage years, Burnham made a wonderful little film with Eighth Grade.