★★★★½

Growing up isn't easy - especially when you're forced to endure the purgatory that is middle school. That's what Kayla Day is going through, a 13-year-old girl who is mercifully entering her final week of eighth grade. But as we all do when we are 13, Kayla feels like her misery will last forever. Eighth Grade reminds us that while it can be hard to look beyond the present when that's all you can see, there is always something waiting on the other side.

Written and directed by Bo Burnham, the film is centred around our protagonist, Kayla (Elsie Fisher, who is phenomenal), over the course of a week. Kayla is a shy, awkward girl who makes YouTube videos and is just trying her best to fit in. Kayla is often painfully relatable, from her anxiety about attending a pool party thrown by the popular girl or struggling with speaking to boys. Viewers will inevitably root for her, and many young girls today will likely see a little bit of themselves in her.

Elsie Fisher absolutely steals the show. She is impressively captivating to watch, her character articulating herself the way virtually every 13-year-old girl does, with an interchangeable roster of "likes," "ums," and stutters. She is utterly convincing as Kayla and it's quite easy to forget that they are not one and the same.

This film is Bo Burnham's directorial debut, which is pretty impressive - the tone of the film is spot-on with giving the audience a sense of emotional attachment to Kayla's journey, and you come to care about what happens to her nearly immediately. Burnham also wrote the movie, and I actually think the script is even stronger than the direction. The film's events are all just so real and reminiscent of what many experienced in grade school. Part of me wonders how Burnham got inside the mind of a real, young teenage girl in 2018. All this plus a phenomenal score really made the film an undeniable success.

The eighth grade as portrayed in the world of this film is startlingly real: boys are immature, teachers make desperate attempts to be cool by adding "It's gonna be lit" to the end of every announcement, Vine references shouted during assembly, a ridiculously out-of-tune school band, and lockdown drills to prepare for a school shooting - all of it brought me back to that cringingly awkward time. But those of us who endured that horrible phase can find a sense of catharsis in Kayla, and how far she comes by the end of the movie. Maybe most of us are not in eighth grade anymore, but we are presented with the beautiful reminder that everything is temporary, and we will come out the other side stronger than ever before.