About Perks of Being A Wallflower
The Perks of Being A Wallflower is a movie about socially awkward teen Charlie who is a wallflower and is always watching life from the sidelines. That is until two charismatic students become his mentors. Free-spirited Sam and her stepbrother Patrick play a key role in assisting Charlie discover the joys of friendship, first love, music and more, while a teacher sparks Charlie’s dreams of becoming a writer. Charlie’s new pals graduate and prepare to leave for college, Charlie’s inner sadness threatens to shatter his newfound confidence.
Here’s twenty movies like Perks of Being A Wallflower for you to add to your bucket list. Let me know what you think of them.
1. Foxfire (1996)
Foxfire is a 1996 American teen drama film directed by Annette Haywood-Carter. Based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, it examines the coming of age of four high school girls who form an unlikely bond after beating up a teacher who has sexually harassed them. They build a solid friendship but their wild ways begin to get out of control.
2. Eighth Grade (2018)
Directed by YouTube star Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade follows quiet, socially anxious Kayla (Elsie Fisher) as she navigates her last couple of weeks of middle school, the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year before she begins high school.
3. Kids (1995)
Kids is an American coming-of-age film that divided critics when it was released in 1995. The film follows the literal exploits of Telly and his best friend Casper, teenage skateboarders living in NYC which was critically acclaimed, though the film’s powerful and candid portrayal of teenage sexuality and drug abuse made it controversial.
4. Augusta, Gone (2006)
Augusta, Gone is a drama movie starring Sharon Lawrence and Mika Boorem. Martha is a businesswoman and divorced mother of two children – Augusta and Jack. However, when docile Augusta becomes a teenager, feelings of anger and self-hate cause her personality to undergo a scary transformation, and Martha realizes that this is not just typical teen angst.
Augusta starts doing drugs, drinking, and ends up on the streets. Her concerned mother and father reach out to an educational consultant, who advises them to send Augusta to a strict wilderness camp for troubled teens. However, even the institution’s experienced and tough administrators find Augusta a difficulty to keep under control. Martha comes to realize that there is no answer to her daughter’s behavior.
5. Heathers (1988)
The odd and often uncomfortable world of teen peer pressure is no stranger to any of us, and this dark comedy zooms unhesitatingly into this pressure cooker. It dishes up some grotesque stereotypes, and tosses them into a cleverly campy scenario that threatens the lives of the entire student body of Westburg High.
Heathers is a well-acted movie with many memorable lines. It’s become a classic of the teenage macabre genre, and with good reason. Older teens and adults will find that there’s much dark delight to be found in its silly, biting twist on teen life.
6. Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Girl, Interrupted is the searing true story of Susanna Kaysen, a young woman who finds herself at a renowned mental institution for troubled young women, where she must choose between the world of people who belong on the inside like the seductive and dangerous Lisa or the often difficult world of reality on the outside.
Girl, Interrupted is a powerful and compelling examination of mental illness which has aged extremely well and still resonates with modern audiences.
7. White Oleander (2002)
White Oleander is a harrowing, coming-of-age story based on the best selling novel by Janet Fitch. Twelve-year-old Astrid shares an idyllic life with her mother Ingrid, a beautiful and free-spirited artist. When her mom is suddenly sent to prison for life for committing a crime of passion, Astrid is set adrift in the world.
Alone to struggle to become her own person, she goes through foster home after foster home experiencing forbidden love, religion, near-death experiences, drugs, starvation and how it feels to be loved.
8. Easy A (2010)
Easy A is a comedy in which a high-school student finds herself labelled as promiscuous after some gossip is overheard, a clean cut high school girl sees her life paralleling Hester Prynne’s in “The Scarlet Letter,” which she is currently studying in school until she decides to use the rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing.
Now her classmates are turning against her and the school board is becoming concerned, including her favorite teacher and the distracted guidance counselor. With the support of her hilariously idiosyncratic parents and a little help from a long-time crush, Olive attempts to take on her notorious new identity and crush the rumor mill once and for all.
9. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
This visionary film from director Darren Aronofsky follows four characters experiencing the downward spiral of drug addiction. The film depicts four characters affected by drug addiction and how it changes their physical and emotional states. Their addictions cause them to become imprisoned in a world of delusion and desperation.
Requiem for a Dream is a generational film and a philosophical one, as well as Trainspotting. Its themes are indeed at the heart of contemporary youth. But beyond that, Requiem is a reflection on addiction, on the alienation and self-ownership.
10. Lady Bird (2017)
Lady Bird is an American drama and comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig. The main character Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson fights against but is exactly like her wildly loving, deeply opinionated and strong-willed mom, a nurse working tirelessly to keep her family afloat after Lady Bird’s father loses his job.
Set in Sacramento, California in 2002, amidst a rapidly shifting American economic landscape, Lady Bird is an affecting look at the relationships that shape us, the beliefs that define us, and the unmatched beauty of a place called home.
11. The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
The Edge of Seventeen is a poignant and hilarious look at what it’s like to be a teenager today. Growing up is hard, and life is no easier for Nadine, who is already at peak awkwardness when her best friend Krista begins dating her all-star brother Darian.
All at once, Nadine feels more alone than ever. With the help of her reluctant sounding-board, she soon discovers that what feels like the end of the world may just be the beginning of growing up.
12. Fish Tank (2009)
Fish Tank depicts the life of Mia Williams, a volatile and socially isolated 15-year-old girl who is hurtling toward a lifetime of misery. She lives on an East London council estate with her single mother, Joanne, and younger sister, Tyler. Mia has an altercation with her best friend and her relations with her verbally abusive mother and sister aren’t good.
She is expelled from school and is awaiting admission to a referrals unit and spends her days aimlessly. She starts an awkward friendship with Joanne’s cunning boyfriend, Connor, who embolden her one interest, dancing.
13. The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)
The Diary of a Teenage Girl portrays the life of Minnie, a young teen artist living in 1970s San Francisco who enters into an affair with her mother’s boyfriend. Minnie had a poor self-image, when discovers she is attractive and that she loves sex. Her at times drug induced, artistic-imagination often intercedes in her reality. In this story about sexual betytral and a coming-of-age young girl, discovering herself as a woman.
14. Christiane F. (1980)
Christiane F. is a 1981 German biographical drama film directed by Uli Edel that portrays the descent of Christiane Felscherinow, a bored 13-year-old growing up in mid-1970s West Berlin, to a 14-year-old heroin addict. This German film that vividly conveys the physical and mental debilitation of drug addiction.
15. The Virgin Suicides (1993)
The Virgin Suicides offers a glimpse into the murky unknowability of adolescence, and its legacy is tied to the portraits of femininity with which Sofia Coppola has crafted her filmography. The story is about five beautiful, dreamy Lisbon sisters, whose doomed fates indelibly marked the neighborhood boys who to this day continue to obsess over them.
A story of love and repression, fantasy and terror, sex and death, memory and longing. It is at its core a mystery story: a heart-rending investigation into the impenetrable, life-altering secrets of American adolescence.
16. You & Me Forever (2012)
You & Me Forever is a drama film about friendship, jealousies, and growing up. Laura and Christine are both 16 years old and best friends. But a young, more cosmopolitan girl, Maria, arrives at their school, and she proves to be mysterious and exciting. The relationship between the three takes an intense twist as Maria acknowledges bisexual encounters. For Laura, the new friendship upends the world she thought she knew.
17. Mean Girls (2004)
Mean Girls is another teen comedy movie you would love to watch. Teenage Cady Heron moves to the suburbs of Illinois and joins public school, She gets a quick primer on the cruel, tacit laws of popularity that divide her fellow students into tightly knit cliques.
She unwittingly finds herself in the good graces of an elite group of cool students dubbed “the Plastics,” but Cady soon realizes how her shallow group of new friends earned this nickname.
RELATED: The 30 Funniest Mean Girls Quotes
18. Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)
Riding in Cars with Boys is an autobiographic film that tells the true story of writer Beverly Donofrio. This movie chronicles her coming of age in the late 1960s and her whole life influenced by an event that occured when she was fifteen. The events cover nearly two decades, as the young protagonist experiences often-humorous, sometimes-irreverent, but undoubtedly a unique personal journey to make something meaningful of her life.
19. Thirteen (2003)
Released in 2003, Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen is a riveting movie offering a glimpse into urban adolescence in 2003. The film follows the main character, Tracy who is a thirteen year old seventh grader trying to find herself in the midst of her parents divorce. Thirteen reflects on the themes of coming of age as well as the culture of the early 2000s.
It uses elements of realism through its dialogues and careful characterization. Thirteen humanizes teenage girls who are usually portrayed in films as either two-dimensional bimbos or crazy dream girls in favor of the male gaze.
RELATED: 35 Movies like Thirteen that Everyone Needs to Watch
20. Sweet Dreams (1985)
Directed by Karel Reisz, Sweet Dreams is a biographical drama that tells the life story of country music star Patsy Cline. It follows traces Cline’s rise to fame, her tumultuous personal life, and her untimely death at the ripe young age of 30.
As expected, Sweet Dreams explores themes of passion, ambition, and the price of success in the music industry. It also features all her major hits including “Crazy” and “Walkin’ After Midnight.”
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