Movies Like
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Drama
If you loved The Perks of Being a Wallflower, you'll love these similar films. Handpicked based on shared themes, genre, and feel.
Joe Bell
The true story of a small town, working class father who embarks on a solo walk across the U.S. to crusade against bullying after his son is tormented in high school for being gay.
Moonlight
The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.
Bully
A group of teenagers in South Florida enact a murder plot against their mutual bully, Bobby, who has emotionally, physically, and sexually abused them for years.
Midnight Cowboy
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
Brave the Dark
When Mr. Deen discovers one of his students has been living out of his car and thrown into jail, he decides to bail him out. Determined to curb Nate’s self-destructive behavior, Deen quickly discovers a host of dark secrets slowly tearing Nate apart. What began as a good deed becomes a desperate fight to save Nate from his own demons. As Nate spirals deeper into despair, Deen must decide how far he’s willing to go to save a kid on the brink of losing everything—even himself.
Apt Pupil
One day in 1984, Todd Bowden, a brilliant high school boy fascinated by the history of Nazism, stumbles across an old man whose appearance resembles that of Kurt Dussander, a wanted Nazi war criminal. A month later, Todd decides to knock on his door.
My Brother the Devil
Fourteen-year-old Mo is a lonely, sensitive boy whose hunger for the rant and banter of buddies makes him prone to tread dangerous territories. He idolizes his handsome older brother, Rashid, a charismatic, well-respected member of a local gang, whose drug dealing enables “Rash” to provide for his family. Aching to be seen as a tough guy himself, Mo takes a job that unlocks a fateful turn of events and forces the brothers to confront their inner demons. It turns out that hate is easy. It is love and understanding that take real courage.
The Boys in the Band
At a birthday party in 1968 New York, a surprise guest and a drunken game leave seven gay friends reckoning with unspoken feelings and buried truths.
Beautiful Boy
After he and his first wife separate, journalist David Sheff struggles to help their teenage son, who goes from experimenting with drugs to becoming devastatingly addicted to methamphetamine.
We the Animals
Manny, Joel and Jonah tear their way through childhood and push against the volatile love of their parents. As Manny and Joel grow into versions of their father and Ma dreams of escape, Jonah, the youngest, embraces an imagined world all his own.
My Friend Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer struggles with a difficult family life as a young boy. During his teenage years he slowly transforms, edging closer to the serial killer he was to become.
Luckiest Girl Alive
A successful woman in New York City finds her life upended when she is forced to confront a dark truth that threatens to unravel her meticulously crafted life.
The Crush
A precocious and obsessive teenager develops a crush on a naive writer with harrowing consequences.
The Chocolate War
Jerry, a new student at an elite Catholic prep school, must face the hazing practices handed down by the Vigils, a group of powerful students. When teacher Brother Leon pushes the students to sell chocolates for a fundraiser, the head of the Vigils, Archie, gets Jerry to reject selling for 10 days. However, Jerry decides to keep up the refusal past the original time frame, which pits him against the Vigils and the school staff.
Speak
Freshman high-school student Melinda has refused to speak ever since she called the cops on a popular summer party. With her old friends snubbing her for being a rat, and her parents too busy to notice her troubles, she folds into herself, trying to hide her secret: that star senior Andy raped her at the party. But Melinda does manage to find solace in her art class headed by Mr. Freeman.
The Tender Bar
JR is a fatherless boy growing up in the glow of a bar where the bartender, his Uncle Charlie, is the sharpest and most colorful of an assortment of quirky and demonstrative father figures. As the boy’s determined mother struggles to provide her son with opportunities denied to her — and leave the dilapidated home of her outrageous if begrudgingly supportive father — JR begins to gamely, if not always gracefully, pursue his romantic and professional dreams, with one foot persistently placed in Uncle Charlie’s bar.
The Hate U Give
Raised in a poverty-stricken slum, a 16-year-old girl named Starr now attends a suburban prep school. After she witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend, she's torn between her two very different worlds as she tries to speak her truth.
The Basketball Diaries
A high school basketball player’s life turns upside down after free-falling into the harrowing world of drug addiction.
Submission
A well-respected professor who is a celebrated novelist and loving husband loses himself when he becomes obsessed with an ambitious and talented student.
Palo Alto
A lack of parental guidance encourages teens in an affluent California town to rebel with substance abuse and casual sex.
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