I’m doing something a little different with this review. My wife, Rae, felt so strongly about Promising Young Woman when we finished watching it together that she felt compelled to write about it. I thought it would be cool to get a male and female perspective, for this movie especially. Whenever I write about a movie that focuses on a historically oppressed class of people, I try to seek out someone in that particular group to give me feedback before I publish, to make sure my white, straight, cis, male point-of-view isn’t causing me to write insensitive or unintentionally ignorant things. For this review, I’m including the entire perspective in the form of Rae’s review. I hope you enjoy the experiment. Please let us know what you think in the comments section!
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The bright, shining star at the center of Eighth Grade is Elsie Fisher as Kayla. She is a revelation. We all wear different masks in our daily lives depending on with whom we’re interacting, and Fisher shows Kayla changing these masks with expert skill. We see confident Kayla, shy Kayla, anxiety-attack Kayla, exuberant Kayla. Fisher is in almost every shot of the picture, and she carries that weight like an acting veteran, not a 15-year-old newcomer.
Eighth Grade is a perfect example of Roger Ebert’s theory of movies as empathy machines. It’s a way to experience the world – even if for just 90 minutes – through someone else’s eyes. Kayla Day encourages us to extend the best parts of our nature to everyone around us. That’s the first step in making the world a better place.
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