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Bo Burnham's 'Eighth Grade' captures the anxiety blast furnace of junior high 

What better setting to dramatize anxiety than junior high school? It's when you're trying to show how cool you are as your insides fill with fear and trembling.

Bo Burnham wants to make one thing clear: Eighth Grade, his blunt, beautiful debut feature about the anxiety blast furnace of middle school, is not based on his own adolescence. For one thing, his protagonist, Kayla, is a girl, played with the vulnerability of an exposed nerve ending by Elsie Fisher. "I've never been a 13-year-old girl," Burnham points out over the phone. Nor did he go to junior high in Kayla's world of Facebook, Snapchat and the social pressure that social media spawns. "I had a big, chunky Motorola cellphone," he says. "And we used AIM for instant messaging."

But he does suffer from anxiety, and he wanted to make a film about it. And what better setting to dramatize anxiety than junior high school? It's when you're trying to show how cool you are as your insides fill with fear and trembling. You're still a kid, but you feel an acute need to become an adult, like, now. Your changing body fosters a daily identity crisis. Your parents might as well be aliens. Every zit is an end-of-the-world affair.

"Everything is high stakes," says Burnham, who, at 27, isn't too far removed from junior high. "Everything matters. It's so intense. You're so confused and you're so out of your depths. Everything is life and death."

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He pauses. "Anxiety makes you feel like an eighth-grader."

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Burnham, who also wrote the script, and Fisher imbue Kayla with a tender soul and the perpetual feeling that she's never comfortable in her own skin. On school superlative day, she's mortified win she wins for most quiet. She pines for a shallow, skinny boy who wins for best eyes. Every word uttered by her single dad (Josh Hamilton) makes her cringe in embarrassment. The only place she feels comfortable is in front of her computer camera, where she makes stream-of-consciousness videos and posts them to YouTube (much as Burnham posted musical comedy videos when he was in high school).

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In one scene, Kayla appears to suffer a full-blown panic attack. She goes to the house where a classmate has reluctantly invited her to a pool party. When she enters the bathroom to change into her suit, she starts breathing in short gasps as the music amps up the anxiety. Finally, she takes a deep breath and walks out to the pool, where her classmates are preening, posing, goofing off, and, yes, trying to show how cool they are.

Determined to make a film about anxiety in the Internet age, Burnham found a goldmine of research material in confessional YouTube videos posted by adolescents. He immediately noticed a difference between the boys and the girls. "The boys tended to talk about Fortnite" — a popular video game released last year  — "and the girls tended to talk about their souls. So it seemed the film would be slightly more interesting with a girl."

Bo Burnham talks with star Elsie Fisher during the making of his film "Eighth Grade."
Bo Burnham talks with star Elsie Fisher during the making of his film "Eighth Grade." (Linda Kallerus / A24)

Eighth Grade has its share of funny moments, and a few that might make you squirm. But even those are shot through with empathy. Burnham has never been a 13-year-old girl, but he probes Kayla's insecurities and small triumphs with generosity and unflinching emotional honesty. He also allows us to savor Kayla's path to authenticity and self-esteem.

Eighth grade isn't easy. But Eighth Grade is a small, shining jewel of a film.