What were you like in eighth grade? Or when you were 13? Were you confident, secure, interesting, brilliant? If you say yes you’re a liar. Everyone was a loser when they were 13. It’s a universal rule. It’s a shared past that we endure to get to the slightly more well-adjusted adult stage. And the further you get away from that traumatising, embarrassing teenaged past, the easier it is to laugh about it and look back at it fondly. That’s where Eighth Grade comes in.
The first trailer for the coming-of-age comedy just dropped and it looks set to be exactly what you might expect — heartwarming, humiliating, awkward, endearing and hilarious. Basically a perfect representation of eighth grade. The film follows painfully shy 13-year-old Kayla (played by the brilliant Elsie Fisher) as she attempts to navigate her last week of middle school and to transform her disastrous social skills before starting high school. Expect: teachers using the word “lit”, lying about Snapchat, online make-up tutorials and lots of selfies.
Eighth Grade is the feature directorial debut from comedian Bo Burnham, and after opening at Sundance back in January, it’s already become a must watch, with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
“Okay, so growing up can be a little scary, and weird,” Elsie says at the start of the trailer, which 13-year-old you would probably call “the understatement of the like, century”.