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The Perks of Being a Wallflower poster

Movies that feel likeThe Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1991. High school freshman Charlie is a wallflower, always watching life from the sidelines, until two senior students, Sam and her stepbrother Patrick, become his mentors, helping him discover the joys of friendship, music and love.

If you loved The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the closest films we have are Aftersun (2022), Mud (2013) and The Florida Project (2017). All three share The Perks of Being a Wallflower's contemplative and wistful feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024).

🍅 85% Rotten Tomatoes★ 7.9 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Stephen Chboskycontemplativewarmwistfulmelancholy
9 of 12 streaming nowNetflix · Amazon Prime Video · Crunchyroll

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If The Perks of Being a Wallflower hit the spot, these will too

Aftersun poster
Aftersun
2022 · dir. Charlotte Wells
🍅 96%★ 7.6dramaRent or buy

The same two preoccupations: depression, and growing up

The difference: Lighter on warmth

Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories fill the gaps between camcorder footages as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the troubled man she didn't.

Mud poster
Mud
2013 · dir. Jeff Nichols
🍅 97%★ 7.3drama

Boys growing up fast through loyalty to a damaged outsider

The difference: Southern river adventure — danger, not dances and mixtapes

Two teenage boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and help him reunite with his lover and escape an avenging family and their armed posse.

The Florida Project poster
The Florida Project
2017 · dir. Sean Baker
🍅 96%★ 7.6drama

Childhood tenderness filmed with clear-eyed compassion

The difference: Much younger kids and harder poverty — vérité, not nostalgia

The story of a precocious six year-old and her ragtag group of friends whose summer break is filled with childhood wonder, possibility and a sense of adventure while the adults around them struggle with hard times.

Dead Poets Society poster
Dead Poets Society
1989 · dir. Peter Weir
🍅 85%★ 8.1drama

Sensitive boys given permission to feel by the right mentor

The difference: A teacher-led drama — tragedy hits harder than healing

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.

A Silent Voice: The Movie poster
A Silent Voice: The Movie
2016 · dir. Naoko Yamada
★ 8.2animation · drama · romance

Guilt, isolation and the slow repair of one friendship

The difference: Anime frankness about bullying and despair — heavier going

Shouya Ishida starts bullying the new girl in class, Shouko Nishimiya, because she is deaf. But as the teasing continues, the rest of the class starts to turn on Shouya for his lack of compassion. When they leave elementary school, Shouko and Shouya do not speak to each other again... until an older, wiser Shouya, tormented by his past behaviour, decides he must see Shouko once more. He wants to atone for his sins, but is it already too late...?

Girl, Interrupted poster
Girl, Interrupted
1999 · dir. James Mangold
🍅 53%★ 7.3drama

Both land stillness and warmth at once

The difference: The scrappier of the two with critics

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.

Leave No Trace poster
Leave No Trace
2018 · dir. Debra Granik
🍅 100%★ 7.1drama

Trauma carried quietly, and the people who don't push

The difference: Sparse wilderness stillness — barely any words at all

A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.

The Hand of God poster
The Hand of God
2021 · dir. Paolo Sorrentino
🍅 83%★ 7.3dramaNetflix

Both are built on the same subject: teenage boy

In 1980s Naples, an awkward teen struggling to find his place experiences heartbreak and liberation after he's inadvertently saved from a freak accident by football legend Diego Maradona.

All the Bright Places poster
All the Bright Places
2020 · dir. Brett Haley
🍅 67%★ 6.6romance · dramaNetflix

The same preoccupation in both: depression

The difference: Leans further into romance

Two teens facing personal struggles form a powerful bond as they embark on a cathartic journey chronicling the wonders of Indiana.

Biutiful poster
Biutiful
2010 · dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu
🍅 66%★ 7.4dramaNetflix

Wistful drama, and it commits to that

This is a story of a man in free fall. On the road to redemption, darkness lights his way. Connected with the afterlife, Uxbal is a tragic hero and father of two who's sensing the danger of death. He struggles with a tainted reality and a fate that works against him in order to forgive, for love, and forever.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies poster
How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies
2024 · dir. Pat Boonnitipat
🍅 98%★ 7.9dramaNetflix

Common ground: growing up

M, a university dropout low on money and luck, volunteers to take care of his terminally ill grandmother, in the hope of pocketing an inheritance.

Manchester by the Sea poster
Manchester by the Sea
2016 · dir. Kenneth Lonergan
🍅 96%★ 7.8dramaPrime Video

Both keep coming back to the same thing: melancholy

After his older brother passes away, Lee Chandler is forced to return home to care for his 16-year-old nephew. There he is compelled to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his family and the community where he was born and raised.

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The best-reviewed films that share The Perks of Being a Wallflower’s defining feeling.