Eighth Grade's R rating — which locks most young people out of the theater unless they attend a screening with a parent or guardian — was recently called out by IndieWire . The reason that Eighth Grade earned such a strict rating is its use of "sexually-derived expletives" — in this case, the f-bomb. While PG-13 movies can utter the expletive once, any more than that and the film receives an automatic R. Characters in Eighth Grade also mention oral sex (though it is only discussed and never actually acted upon), which strengthened the argument for the film's R rating.