The high school movie is, by now, a pretty perfected formula — a genre many of us choose to stick with well past our school days.
And why wouldn’t we? Even if you hated high school (all in attendance, say “here”!), there’s something inherently relatable about high school movies. That’s because, for the majority of us, we’re seeing a world that we’ve been inside of. We know the social dynamics, the clichés, the small things and moments that always seemed to have outsized stakes attached. Although high school life as seen on screen may not always exactly mirror reality — we’re looking at you, acne-free 27-year-olds playing teens — in broad strokes, these movies show a life we recognize.
Maybe you think that life was, or is, a blast. Or maybe you couldn’t get paid enough to repeat high school. Regardless of which side of the spectrum you fall on, as we grow older, there’s often something both uncomfortable and cathartic about returning to this version of ourselves via high school movies. In spite of — or perhaps because of — their flaws, the protagonists of these films are almost always easy to root for. That’s because who we’re really rooting for is our high-school selves.
Luckily, if you’re in the mood for some solid 9th-through-12th grade cinematic content, there are multiple decades to pull from. Below, we’ve rounded up 25 of our fave high school movies—everything from the kickoff, commonly credited as 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause, to today’s top Netflix films.
1. Do Revenge (2022)
When popular girl Drea Torres (Camila Mendes) doesn’t get accepted to Yale because of a leaked video, she forms an unlikely friendship with outcast Eleanor (Maya Hawke). Previously popular and feared by fellow students, Drea is mostly understood—a Mexican-American who has managed to climb the social ladder of her predominantly-white high school. After the video goes public, Drea and Eleanor decide to swap revenge plots. The next steps bring in elements of Cruel Intentions, 10 Things I Hate About You, and other classic high school films from long ago. I won’t spoil the plot, but it involves a complete makeover, and extravagant plan to ruin the lives of those who leaked the video, and much more drama. Plus, Teen Vogue is basically a character in the first part of the film, so that makes it a must-watch in our eyes.
2. Eighth Grade (2018)
The film takes a look at the final week of Kayla (played by Elsie Fisher), a middle schooler experiencing the last week of class and staring directly down the tunnel toward high school. While not exactly a movie set in a high school setting, it touches on the very specific feeling of anxiety, doubt, and excitement everyone experiences before making the jump to a new school.
3. Pretty in Pink (1986)
Everyone should see this classic at least once. Molly Ringwald, queen of teenage rom-coms, plays Andie, a slight outcast who works at a record shop. She can often be found with her boss (Annie Potts) or her classmate Duckie (Jon Cryer), but once one of the popular kids at school asks her out, everything changes. Dating someone who lives in a world so different from your own isn’t easy, and this is a spotlight into the intricacies of high school love.
4. Friday Night Lights (2004)
If you love the idea of spending Friday nights watching your football team take the field, this is a must-watch for you. Set in Dillon, Texas, the movie follows a season for the Panthers, led by coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler). Local reporter Buzz Bissinger, who recently moved to the area from Philadelphia, makes it a goal to document the season’s best and worst moments.
5. Say Anything (1989)
Say Anything focuses on the feeling of first love, starring John Cusack as Lloyd and Ione Skye as his crush, Diane. As the story so often goes, Diane is the beautiful straight-A student and Lloyd faces a big obstacle with her overly protective father (played by John Mahoney). It’s funny, it’s cute, and it’s at the top of our teen love movies list. It may even convince you to stand outside your crush’s house with a boombox.
6. Love, Simon (2018)
Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) hasn’t come out to his friends and family. After meeting someone online and forming a relationship, a fellow high school student threatens to out him to the entire school. Simon works to keep things among his family and friends in check while searching for the identity of his online crush. This is an emotional one, especially for those who struggled or are struggling with sharing their own identity with others.
7. The Breakfast Club (1985)
Detention is never supposed to be fun, but one fateful Saturday detention session brings together an unlikely crew of students in this movie. John (Judd Nelson), Claire (Molly Ringwald), Allison (Ally Sheedy), Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), and Andrew (Emilio Estevez). As you can imagine, there’s an outcast, jock, rebel, princess, and the brainy student—but we’ll let you give it a watch and figure out who each person is. The weekend punishment gives them an opportunity to meet each other and learn more about life in general.
8. Never Been Kissed (1999)
Drew Barrymore stars in this highly unlikely plot as Josie Geller, a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times who goes undercover as a student at her former high school. Why? She’s reporting on contemporary teenage culture, of course, which—at this point—is wonderfully outdated. The big problem she faces? Falling in love with her English teacher, played by Michael Vartan. But she does manage to buddy up with the most popular group in school, so there’s something.
9. Booksmart (2019)
High school movie critics often like to point to how repetitive these films are when casting judgment. To be fair, they are pretty formulaic, and Booksmart — with its house party-centric plot — is no exception. Somehow, though, it still manages to feel like a fresh (and extremely funny) addition to the genre. Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) are two Ivy League-bound best buds who’ve spent their high school years watching Ken Burns documentaries and staying out of trouble. The girls decide, just hours ahead of graduation, that it’s time to switch up their narrative, and 90ish minutes of A+ antics ensue.
10. She’s All That (1999)
Another complete throwback, you’d be surprised at how many one-liners have continued to exist long after this movie was released. (Example: “Sometimes when you open up to people, you let the bad in with the good.”) Here’s the rundown: Popular guy Zach Siler (Freddie Prinze Jr.) gets dumped by his cheerleader girlfriend (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe). Faced with a dare of sorts, he accepts the challenge of turning outcast Laney Boggs (played by Rachael Leigh Cook) into prom queen. Expect tons of mean girl moments, high school drama, and iconic ‘90s fashion.
11. The Half Of It, 2020
Tender and charming, this queer rom-com is hailed as one of the best teen movies on Netflix, with writer-director Alice Wu to thank for it. Back in 2005, Wu first made a name for herself with Saving Face, a movie that also centers a queer Chinese-American protagonist and helped to inspire a new generation of Asian American talent. (Major names, from Ali Wong and Lulu Wang to Awkwafina, have all shared their love for the film.) In her return 15 years later, Wu gives us Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), an all-A’s Chinese-American student who becomes unexpectedly entangled with the school jock (Daniel Diemer) when he turns to her for help courting dream-girl Aster Flores (Alexxis Lemire). The catch? Ellie is in love with Aster, too.
12. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
It’s the movie that launched a thousand Heath Ledger crushes. And, for that reason, it requires little by way of introduction. Based loosely on The Taming of the Shrew, it’s also the first of two Shakespeare-inspired movies that star Julia Stiles on this list. That’s out of three Shakespearean movies Stiles did total between 1999 and 2001 — talk about a Y2K-era match made in heaven!
13. Bring It On (2000)
Two (plus) decades later, Bring It On feels as topical as ever. It’s a story about a sports rivalry, with two high school cheer squads preparing to compete in nationals. But more than that, it’s a story about white people’s theft of Black culture and Black artistry, as the predominantly white Rancho Carne Toros, led by Torrence (Kirsten Dunst), discover their best dance moves were, in fact, stolen from the East Compton Clovers, a predominantly Black squad helmed by Isis (Gabrielle Union). But despite its raising of an important issue, let’s also be sure and note that this white woman-written, white man-directed movie is far from a perfectly inclusive thing; that’s something Union recently made clear on TikTok.
14. Love & Basketball (2000)
When first-time writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood set out to create Love & Basketball — her semi-autobiographical movie following Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps) throughout 12 years of, you guessed it, love and basketball — she wanted to make a Black When Harry Met Sally. “We weren’t being put into love stories, and I wanted to see myself reflected,” she later said. “And then I started wanting to tell the story of this girl that I felt hadn’t been seen as well, an athlete.” The result? A movie that’s hailed both as a story of authentic Black love and of a young Black woman’s ambition and athleticism.
15. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
This James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo-starring classic is, in many ways, the first real teen movie. That’s because, in the ‘50s, our modern idea of the teenager had only recently been invented — and cars, similar to their role in Rebel Without a Cause, played a big part. The movie was released less than a month after Dean, at age 24, died in a car crash, and it would go on to eternally cement him as a symbol of youthful rebellion, disillusionment and sex. Dripping with homoerotic tension, Rebel lives on as what’s often considered the first mainstream movie to depict queer desire.
16. Heathers (1998)
The darkly satirical Heathers is a cult favorite belonging on any high school movie list. In it, Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) and her new-kid boyfriend, J.D. (who, played by Christian Slater, is basically a high school anarchist’s wet dream), accidentally murder the leader of Veronica’s circle of frememies, the Heathers. Social-order subversion and a heavy helping of black comedy follow.
17. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
The To All the Boys franchise-turned-phenomenon, based on the best-selling YA trilogy, helped usher in a new era of Netflix teen movies and Asian American stories on screen. The first of these movies introduces us to Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor), the series’ endearing protagonist whose life gets turned upside down when her private love letters are accidentally sent to past and current crushes. Tip: Follow this one up with the XO, Kitty spinoff series on Netflix.
18. Donnie Darko (2001)
Can you even graduate from high school without at least one dude insufferably explaining the ending of this movie to you? (Flash to me in high school, being that dude.) Starring Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jenna Malone, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, a human-sized rabbit named Frank, and Seth Rogen for I’m pretty sure 15 seconds, Donnie Darko seems likely to live on as a rite-of-passage teen movie for generations to come. After all, teens being the ones to, like Donnie, recognize the end of the world is coming probably won’t become less relevant.
19. Carrie (1976)
In some ways, Carrie is about as high school as you can get. Adapted from a Stephen King novel, teenage social dynamics provide the perfect canvas for its horrors. Carrie (Sissy Spacek) is a shy (and telekinetic, duh) 16 year old who sits on the outermost fringes of her school’s social strata. Misunderstood and ostracized by her peers, her home environment, where she’s controlled by an overbearing, deeply religious mother, is hardly more welcoming. After suffering a final humiliation at prom, Carrie gets her revenge in one of the movieverse’s most iconic high school dance scenes.
20. The Hate U Give (2018)
Amandla Stenberg’s Starr Carter is a 16-year-old high school student whose activism against police brutality, painfully, begins when she sees her childhood best friend murdered at a traffic stop. Starr has long felt stuck between two worlds; living in a poor, predominantly Black neighborhood, she attends school at a ritzy (and mostly white) prep school. With the shooting comes a collision of these worlds, as Starr finds her voice and fights for her community. It’s not a light watch, and those impacted by police violence may want to incorporate self-care when viewing.
21. Love Don’t Cost a Thing (2003)
A remake of 1997’s Can’t Buy Me Love, this Nick Cannon and Christina Milian flick carries on in the fake-relationship-turned-real-feelings tradition of rom-coms. Alvin Johnson (Cannon) gets A’s in science and — not-so-high marks in dating. When Paris Morgan (Milian), the most popular girl in school, shows up at the auto shop he works at, Alvin sees an opportunity. The shop’s backed up, but he’ll fix her mom’s Cadillac (and her odds of getting grounded) ASAP, if she’ll date him for two weeks. What happens next is anyone’s guess! (You definitely know what happens next.)
22. Jawbreaker (1999)
This movie is basically Heathers, except instead of Veronica Sawyer, it’s a more cutthroat version (semi-literally) of Mean Girls’ Regina George in the lead. Courtney (Rose McGowan) leads her clique in a birthday prank on fellow popular friend Liz Purr. The prank turns deadly, and what follows is a darkly funny, violent takedown of high school pecking orders and popularity. Featuring a Cady Heron versus Regina George-esque feud and another memorable prom scene finale, it’s as full of high school movie tropes as Gretchen’s hair is of secrets.
23. Mean Girls (2004)
Having just spent so much of Heathers’ blurb making Mean Girls references, I’m forced to contend with an awkward reality. Despite being personally ambivalent (or so I tell myself) toward Tina Fey’s cult comedy creation, its impact as a cultural touchstone for late Millennials onward is pretty much inescapable. If we had to collectively choose one high school movie for my generation, Mean Girls is probably it.
24. O, 2001
You knew it was coming. (I mean, if you read the first entry on this list, you literally knew it was coming.) This Julia Stiles, Mekhi Phifer and Josh Hartnett-starring drama picks up the storyline of Shakespeare’s Othello and puts it down on a high school basketball court.
25. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1992
Make no mistake. With a 36% percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie hardly holds a candle to its TV equivalent. (The RT reviews, by the way, are a trip to read. “The worst tendencies of horror and teen pictures,” says one. “Somewhere between Prom Night and Dracula,” reads another.) If you need a campy hate-watch that you don’t really hate, the Buffy movie, starring Kristy Swanson, Luke Perry, Donald Sutherland and — Hilary Swank? — might be the ticket.
26. Grease, 1978
Maybe “Summer Nights” is your go-to karaoke song, and you consider Grease one of the best teen movies ever made. Or maybe you think it's a sexist relic in the way that most stories romanticizing the 1950s, y’know, are. For better or worse, it definitely lives on as a classic high school movie.
27. Save the Last Dance, 2001
Julia Stiles! So we meet (yet) again. This early-aughts dance movie sees Stiles play Sara, a midwestern teen with aspirations of becoming a professional ballerina. Those aspirations seem forever shelved when her mother, en route to meet her at an audition, is killed in a car accident. Sara is sent to live with her father on Chicago’s South Side where, at her new school, she meets Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas) and his sister Chenille (a 22-year-old Kerry Washington in one of her first roles). Expect interracial love, some very real conversations about privilege (including the aspects white women tend not to get), and at least one intensely dramatic, high-stakes dance number.
28. Dazed and Confused, 1993
A quintessential stoner movie, Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused is also one of the most iconic 90s teen movies in a decade that was full of ‘em. The whole idea, Linklater later said, was to make an “anti-nostalgic movie… I wanted to do a realistic teen movie. Most of them had too much drama and plot, but teenage life is more like you’re looking for the party, looking for something cool, the endless pursuit of something you never find.” Dazed and Confused, which picks up with a group of circa-1976 high school seniors on their last day of school, very much embodies that spirit.
29. Superbad (2007)
This movie breaks down the absolutely legendary high school night that most of us will (hopefully) never experience. Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse form an unlikely crew of buddies with a common goal: find some booze for the big party, make their crushes fall in love with them. Of course, it’s not that easy. Run-ins with the cops (one of whom is hilariously played by Bill Hader), crashing parties where they are certainly unwelcome, and one poorly made fake ID litter the night’s itinerary. We don’t recommend recreating this night in any shape of form, but the feeling of desperately wanted to impress your crush will resonate.
30. She’s the Man, 2006
Twelfth Night was, loosely, the inspiration for this mid-aughts Amanda Bynes vehicle, because to make movies between 1996 and 2006 meant you had to love Shakespeare? Viola Johnson (Bynes) is all about soccer — until her school’s team gets cut. Meanwhile, the boys’ soccer team at the preppy boarding school her twin brother, Sebastian, attends is doing just fine, because of course they are. When Sebastian ditches school to tour with his band, Viola sees an opportunity to chop her hair off and try out for the boys’ team as him. A gender-flipping movie that at least dips its toes into some queer themes, this was also Bynes at her comedic best.
31. High School Musical, 2006
I kind of hate to include Grease on here twice. (And that’s not hyperbole; In 1999, an early version of HSM’s script was being shopped around as Grease 3, with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake in mind for the leads.) Even if high school, well, musicals aren’t so much your jam, the generational impact of High School Musical can’t be avoided. And if you were, and are, an HSM lover, there’s a reason you found those song-and-dance numbers so catchy. The movie was largely the product of Kenny Ortega, the director and choreographer who’s responsible for bringing us cult faves like Hocus Pocus, Dirty Dancing, Newsies and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Basically, High School Musical was always destined for teen movie stardom.
32. Scream, 1996
Before Scream, horror movies were largely in decline — meaning we have a lot to thank Wes Craven for. His black comedy slasher movie, following Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a California high school student-turned-target of a mysterious, costume-clad killer, instantly became a modern horror classic and changed the game for scary movies after it. It’s funny, self-aware, and, in Sidney, featured a new kind of female horror movie protagonist.
33. Clueless, 1995
It’s, inarguably, one of the most iconic high school movies of all time. Starring Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Stacey Dash and Brittany Murphy as modern, Beverly Hills-ified versions of Jane Austen’s Emma characters, Clueless’ impact is perhaps most felt today not as a classic rom-com, but as an enduring style tastemaker. Almost 30 years later, Cher Horowitz & Co. still inspire fashion trends.
34. Lady Bird, 2017
As far as prickly teen personas go, Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) isn’t the worst, but she’s not the best either. Basically, she’s not always super likable, and that’s part of what makes her, and the movie as a whole, feel real. For a lot of viewers, it was easy to see elements of our high school selves in her, as Lady Bird dreams of escaping small-town Sacramento and starting her real life at an East Coast college, where she’ll study — well, that part she’ll figure out later. The important thing is getting out, and getting to somewhere interesting. The first movie Greta Gerwig directed independently, Lady Bird is smart, compassionate and a high school movie mainstay from here on out.
35. Almost Famous, 2000
Sometimes, high school is characterized not by the things you’re doing, but the things you’d rather be doing. For 15-year-old William (Patrick Fugit) in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, that looks like becoming a music writer as soon as humanly possible. When he gets the chance to ditch school for a Rolling Stone assignment and go on the road with Stillwater, a rock band helmed by “guitarist with mystique” Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup), he takes it. Joined by Band-Aids leader and fellow real-world-escaping teen Penny Lane (Kate Hudson, in a Golden Globe-winning performance), Almost Famous is a high school movie in spirit only. But the spirit is definitely there.
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