The best teen movies to stream on Netflix

Director Alice Wu

Cast Leah Lewis, Daniel Diemer, Alexxis Lemire

When straight-A student Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis) is asked by the school jock, Paul Munsky (Daniel Diemer) to help him write love letters to his crush Aster (Alexxis Lemire), she accepts. Not only does she need the money, she harbours a secret: she has a crush on Aster, too. Thus begins a queer take on this classic teen romance trope, and which results in a tender, funny and smart teen (semi) romantic comedy.

Director: Susan Johnson

Cast: Lana Condor, Noah Centineo

To deal with her intense crushes, Lara Jean (Condor) writes secret love letters to the boys she lusts after, which no one is ever meant to see. Of course, these letters end up being sent out and Lara Jean must deal with her feelings, and the implications of the letters, head on. This Netflix Original movie, based on the book of the same name by Jenny Han, has been praised by all corners of the internet, especially for the performances of Condor and Noah Centineo, who plays love interest Peter Kavinsky. In fact, it's proven so popular that it's spawned two sequels and a spinoff TV series, XO, Kitty. 

Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

Voice cast: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld

Even if you’re disinterested and/or exhausted by comic-book movies, make time for this one. Sure, it retells the basic Spidey origin story – kid gets bit by radioactive spider, turns into web-slinging superhero – but it’s as much about growing up in New York’s Black and Latinx communities as comic-book mythos. Until, of course, the multiverse opens up, and all heck breaks loose. Animated with true visual pow, it’s the Spider-Man movie everyone can find some joy in.

Director: Nattawut Poonpiriya

Cast: Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, Chanon Santinatornkul, Teeradon Supapunpinyo, Eisaya Hosuwan

Cheating on school tests is a trope from teen sitcoms, but this Thai production gives it high-stakes, heist-movie energy. A teenage brainiac (first-timer Chuengcharoensukying) develops a lucrative scheme helping the rich kids at her prestigious high school cheat on their exams, culminating in a complex plot to smuggle the answers for an international college admissions test out of a classroom in Australia back to Thailand. Director Poonpiriya manages to make the act of sitting at a desk filling in answer bubbles as heartracing as rappelling into the Louvre to steal the Mona Lisa.

Director: Henry Bradbeer

Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Sam Clafin

Young Enola Holmes is every bit as cunning as her world famous detective brother, but being a teenage girl in the 19th century, she doesn’t have many opportunities to prove it – that is, until her mother suddenly goes missing. Millie Bobby Brown, endearingly confident in the title role, proves she can do much more than scarf down Eggos and beat up monsters with her mind.   

Director: Takehiko Inoue

Voice cast: Shugo Nakamura, Jun Kasama, Shinichiro Kamio 

Writer-director Takehiko Inoue adapts his own popular manga comic into the highest-grossing basketball movie of all-time worldwide – yes, it even beats both Space Jams. Consolidating the series into a single game interspersed with flashbacks, it focuses on a young point guard named Ryota Miyagi as he leads his team against the ruling high-school champs, driven by the memory of his late brother. The human drama ups the competitive stakes – and the animation is fantastic.

Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson

Cast: Camila Mendes, Maya Hawke

Mix an unabashed love of (and numerous visual nods to) ’90s teen comedies like Clueless and Cruel Intentions with a little bit of Strangers on a Train and you get this highly entertaining teen comedy. Riverdale’s Camila Mendes is a high-school debutante out for revenge after she suspects her boyfriend of leaking a risqué private video online. She enlists social outcast Maya Hawke for help in exchange for assisting in a comeuppance of her own – but it just gets more twisted (and twistier) from there.

Directors Michael Rianda, Jeff Rowe

Cast Danny McBride, Maya Rudoplh, Abbi Jacobson, Olivia Coleman

Too often, road-trip movies sideline their teen characters. This hyper-kinetic, singularly stylish road comedy from the team behind Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse places Abbi Jacobson's incoming college freshman in the pole position on a road-trip across the US with her tech-challenged dad and doting mother. Few films exhibit such a deft understanding of the current online teen culture. And fewer manage such a consistent balance between visual wizardry and rat-a-tat jokes that lane. Even if it were stripped of its robot-invasion plot, the Mitchells are worthy successors to the Griswold clan.

Director: John Hughes

Cast: Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald

John Hughes’s career-defining film remains the standard bearer for smart, heartfelt high school comedies. If we’re being honest, the message is a bit muddled – so deep down, all nonconformists just want to date and/or be Molly Ringwald? – but it remains essential as one of the few teen movies to that point that refused to condescend to its target demographic. Also, the scene where Emilio Estevez smokes weed and becomes a gymnast for some reason? Classic. 

Director: Oz Rodriguez

Cast: Jaden Michael, Gerald W. Jones III, Gregory Diaz IV

Imagine Attack the Block with vampires instead of aliens, or The Lost Boys with a New York accent, and you’ve got this fun, sharply satirical horror-comedy about a crew of youngsters defending their borough from an invading horde of bloodsuckers – and the threat of gentrification. Freshman director Oz Rodriguez lends the story an authentic sense of place, and the lively cast – which also includes amusing turns from Cliff ‘Method Man’ Smith and Joel Martinez, aka the Kid Mero, as the token adults – keeps the energy high.

Director Vince Marcello

Cast Joey King, Jacob Elordi, Joel Courtney, Molly Ringwald

Starring the ’80s queen of teen Molly Ringwald, this Netflix Original movie follows all the gloriously sweet teen tropes. Best friends Elle and Lee have one rule: no getting involved with each other’s relatives. This gets a little complicated, however, after Elle becomes involved with Noah, Lee’s bad-boy older brother. Sure, it’s all fairly fluffy, but we’re really not complaining, and neither were audiences: A third film in the now-trilogy debuts August 11.

Director: Sammi Cohen

Cast: Idina Menzel, Sunny Sandler, Jackie Sandler, Adam Sandler

Is Adam Sandler producing a film and casting literally his entire family an example of mass nepotism or just being a good dad? However you look at it, the end result is a perfectly enjoyable coming-of-age comedy, in which two teen BFFs find their bond challenged by — what else? — a boy. Sunny Sandler, in particular, shows legitimate breakout potential, a promise confirmed by her starring role in another Netflix comedy about warring frienemies, 2026’s Roommates.

Director Leigh Janiak

Cast Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr

When it was announced that RL Stine's PG-rated teen-horror anthology would be getting a gore-slathered, profane adaptation, many were puzzled. But what unfolds in the first part of the now-trilogy is a perfectly calibrated pastiche of '90s teen-slasher classics, complete with likeable Scooby squad of leads, nice comic beats, on-the-nose Rob Zombie needle drops and a surprisingly queer-positive twist on star-crossed lovers. It's also an extremely gnarly slasher: This might be for teens, but it's not wearing kids' gloves. As such, it's certain to be cemented in the sleepover-cinema hall of fame.

Director: Howard Zieff

Cast: Anna Chlumsky, Macaulay Culkin, Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis

Children of the ’90s who grew up without pets or grandparents likely learned their first lesson in loss from this tearjerker, starring a debuting Anna Chlumsky as a young girl in suburban Pennsylvania who herself learns several life lessons in the summer of 1972. (Chief among them: don’t go messing with beehives.) Before its famously tragic ending, though, the film is a warmly nostalgic ode to the joy and confusion of those awkward preteen years, centred around Chlumsky’s character’s sweet friendship with a post-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin.

Director: Anne Fletcher

Cast: Danielle Macdonald, Jennifer Aniston

A plus-sized teen with the quintessentially small-town-Texas name of Willowdean Dixon (Macdonald) enters a local pageant to spite her former beauty queen mother (Aniston) – and possibly find love along the way. Think you’ve seen it before? Well, did any of those other movies have a soundtrack composed entirely of new and old Dolly Parton songs? While Dolly is the draw, the movie also has a humdinger lead performance from Macdonald, and the spirit of uplift is well-earned.

Directors: Samantha Jayne, Arturo Perez Jr.

Cast: Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Tina Fey

The tagline (‘This Isn’t Your Mother’s Mean Girls’) made every millennial instantly turn to dust, but indeed, the new version of the classic 2004 teen comedy isn’t a straightforward remake but rather an adaptation of the mega-popular stage musical that spun off from the generation-defining original – and dang if isn’t pretty fun. Tina Fey, who also wrote the screenplay, and Tim Meadows reprise their roles from the original, while Angourie Rice steps into Lindsay Lohan’s heels as the awkward transfer student who infiltrates the cruellest clique in her high school.

Director: Bang Woo-ri

Cast: Kim You-jung, Byeon Woo-seok, Park Jung-woo

When her best friend takes a leave of absence from school to have heart surgery, Na Bo-ra (You-jung) is entrusted with keeping a close eye on her secret crush – leading Bo-ra to unexpectedly develop feelings of her own for the boy’s best friend. A late-’90s period piece set in a small town in central South Korea, it’s a bittersweet romcom at once specific to the youth culture of Korea at the turn of the 21st century and universal in its exploration of young love and the complicated feelings that accompany it.

Director Craig Johnson

Cast Daniel Doheny, Antonio Marziale, Madeline Weinstein

It’s been dubbed Netflix’s take on Love, Simon, but to pigeonhole this cute coming out/coming-of-age story as a knock-off does it an injustice. We follow the titular Alex as he attempts to figure out his sexuality while also in a relationship with his best friend Claire. The introduction of Elliot, an out and proud gay teen who loves The B-52’s, only complicates matters, as does a hallucinogenic frog…

Director: Brett Haley

Cast: Elle Fanning, Justice Smith, Alexandra Shipp

Adapted from Jennifer Niven’s 2015 novel, the meet-cute in this romantic drama occurs at the edge of bridge, with a young man talking a depressed girl out of committing suicide. It only gets heavier from there. In between, though, it’s an emotional – and even sometimes funny – depiction of two lost souls finding comfort in each other’s company. While certainly melodramatic, the film is held up by the soulful performances from Elle Fanning and Justice Smith, both just in the process of breaking out.

Director: Amy Poehler

Cast: Hadley Robinson, Lauren Tsai, Alysia Pascual-Pena

Sick of the rampant sexism at her high school, 16-year-old Vivian Carter starts an anonymous zine to give herself and her female classmates a forum to express themselves. Written and directed by Amy Poehler, it sounds like a Gen X period piece, but Moxie applies its punk rock style of feminism to the present day to show that the value of standing up and demanding respect for yourself isn’t limited to any particular era.