The Rise of The Middle School Movie!

It would seem that the cultural zeitgeist has been obsessed with the High School Drama™ for as long as we can remember. Whether it was your romantic comedies like 10 Things I Hate About You, dramas like "Euphoria", horror films like Scream, or practically every new Netflix TV show, there has been a large amount of high school content. The confusing space between high school and going into adulthood makes the coming-of-age teenage films seem familiar. However, in recent years, there has been much backlash about the adultification of the high school setting and a recent decline in high school dramas.

It's no secret that 30 and sometimes even 40-year-olds often play teenagers in our favorite dramas like The Breakfast Club or "The Vampire Diaries", musicals like Grease, or 37-year-old Shirley Henderson playing 14-year-old Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter films. When I went to high school, I was surprised that everyone still looked like kids and not like Patrick Swayze. In fact, movies and TV shows have so brainwashed us into believing high schoolers look like Alexa Demie and Jacob Elordi that it's downright jarring whenever we see REAL high schoolers! When high school teenagers are played by adults, and even overtly sexualized like in "Euphoria", we as a culture lose the crucial aspects of what high school means. High school is the transition from childhood to adulthood, and those years are integral for anyone's development, let alone just in films. If you ever ask yourself why no one in "Euphoria" has backpacks or does their homework -- you would not be alone! The high school drama, with all of its tropes and versions in recent years, has lost some of its steam in the movie space, as most of the films seem like carbon copies of each other. Although there have been some outliers, like Bottoms and Lady Bird, the majority of recent high school movies and television stay within their genre tropes -- feeling tired. However, a new coming-of-age genre has been popularized more and more in recent years: the middle school movie!

It's no secret that more and more films have been focused on middle school-aged kids. Whether it's You're So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah, 13: The Musical, Peter Pan and Wendy, Enola Holmes, and even the upcoming Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, The rise of these movies comes as no shock as the high school movie drama has been declining recently. These movies are refreshing because they still have a child-like innocence and curiosity about them. The recent high school drama finds itself skipping the parts about being a child and going straight into the adult world of sex, drugs, alcohol, and suffering. The tween movies focus less on the adult world and more on the personal experiences of being a child who is still learning and growing. The middle school movies seem to play more with their genres, showing the childish perspective within various situations. Whether it's kids fighting against ghosts like in Ghostbusters: Afterlife or tweens solving mysteries like the early seasons of "Stranger Things", these characters have a childlike optimism that juxtaposes against the harsher adult world. Meanwhile, high school dramas tend to lose the optimism of childhood and don't look forward to a future of possibilities. I mean, in "Euphoria", it doesn't feel like any of those characters have an optimistic view of their adult futures!

 It's no wonder more and more of these tween films are coming out recently! If you like middle school movies, then you're in luck because the rate of tween films doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon!