Watching: Eighth Grade

[white_hart]

Former YouTuber Bo Burnham's debut feature film Eighth Grade follows 14-year-old Kayla through her last week of middle school. Like Burnham, Kayla has a YouTube channel, where she posts peppy life-tips videos for fellow teens, but her following is minuscule and in real life she's awkward, shy and lonely; mortified to be voted "Most Quiet" by her classmates, stammering and feeling out of place when invited to a popular girl's birthday party. It's a touching and funny portrait of teenage life in the era of YouTube, Instagram and active shooter drills at school, and manages to be realistic without giving in to the temptation to be grim. Despite the modern technology, and the fact that Burnham wasn't even born when I was a 14-year-old girl, a lot of it felt very familiar. It's deeply ironic that a film about a 14-year-old has a 15 certificate, making it inaccessible to actual 14-year-olds, but it's definitely worth seeing if you remember being 14.