Turbulent Teens – unmissable coming of age movies exploring the rollercoaster of adolescence

Donnie Darko (2001)

By Neil Baker

I do not intend to unpack Richard Kelly’s sublime slice of science fiction, horror, and drama entirely; after all, even a fair few dissertations have been unable to nail down all the themes held in Donnie Darko. Kelly’s movie is the cinematic equivalent of an earworm, as it consumes your thoughts for days, weeks and even months after viewing. It’s like being shrunk and injected into the confused and volatile mind of a teenager or a vivid dream that gnaws away at you long after you wake.

Donnie Darko is a cinematic masterpiece that came close to never being released in theatres. Like so many of the best films ever made, from Citizen Kane to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kelly’s film means different things to different people and morphs into something new with every repeat journey down the cinematic rabbit hole, and to be Frank, that’s a damn rare and precious thing. In this collection of 15 adventures in time and space, Donnie Darko is without doubt the most fascinating, engaging and mysterious puzzle box movie.

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A Taste of Honey (1961)

By Neil Baker

In the spring of 1958, one play would shake the foundations of British theatre and the future of British cinema. The play was A Taste of Honey, a coming-of-age drama that originated in the mind of eighteen-year-old Salford girl, Shelagh Delaney. Drawing on the gritty reality of northern working-class life in Britain, Delaney completed her play in a fortnight before sending her rough draft to the renowned theatre director Joan Littlewood. Littlewood saw potential, and both women honed and perfected the play before it premiered at the Theatre Royal Stratford East on 27 May 1958. 

Set in the 1950s, Delaney’s story centres on Jo, a seventeen-year-old working-class girl, and her unreliable mother, Helen. Jo begins a brief romantic relationship with Jimmy, a black US sailor in port, while her mother disappears with a younger man, leaving Jo to fend for herself. However, as Jo and Jimmy’s relationship deepens, Jo finds herself pregnant, and Jimmy proposes marriage before returning to sea. However, as Jimmy departs, Jo faces the prospect of becoming a single mum – the social taboo of her predicament wrapped in social isolation and racism.

Searching for a safe place away from home, Jo finds lodgings with Geoffrey, a gay man she knows. However, when her mother returns, Jo’s newfound security, belonging and love are threatened by discrimination, isolation and fear. Delaney’s play placed issues of racism, homophobia, sexism and class centre stage and, in turn, tore up the rulebook of British theatre, upsetting many in the process. However, for audiences, A Taste of Honey offered something radical and fundamentally real in its construction.

As a result, A Taste of Honey would be immortalised on screen in 1961; however, its themes concerned censors, and it would earn an X rating, like another groundbreaking movie that year, Basil Dearden’s Victim.

A Taste of Honey is also groundbreaking in its portrayal of gay characters. Richardson ensured Geoffrey (Murray Melvin) sat proudly at the heart of A Taste of Honey. In the hands of Richardson and Melvin, Geoffrey is a rounded, complex, and relatable gay character who would provide early 1960s cinema audiences with their first gay lead. Richardson, Melvin, and Delaney ensure there are no lazy clichés in Geoffrey’s journey with Jo (Rita Tushingham). Here, we are offered a young man forced to endure the homophobia surrounding him as he lives his life discreetly in public and openly in private – the relationship he builds with Jo is based on a foundation of trust and belonging in a society of instant judgment and oppression.

A Taste of Honey was a groundbreaking coming-of-age play and movie that bravely explored themes of sexuality, sexism, race, class, and the multiple layers of social oppression inherent in many communities. Delaney and Richardson placed British society and its class construct under the microscope for all to see and, in doing so, gave birth to a whole new movement in cinema.

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Get Real (1998)

By Neil Baker

Long before sixteen-year-old Simon Spier met the elusive ‘Blue’ through secretive emails in Becky Albertalli’s Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda (2015) and even longer before that story made it to the silver screen with Nick Robinson as Simon, a small-budget British film, based on Patrick Wilde’s play ‘What’s Wrong with Angry?’ helped lay the groundwork for both Albertalli’s book and the later movie adaptation of her work. That film, now largely forgotten in the celluloid mists of time, was Get Real (1998), written by Patrick Wilde and directed by Simon Shore. 

Like the play it is based on, Get Real was groundbreaking, unique and different. Arriving on stage at the same time as Beautiful Thing and on film several years after Jonathan Harvey’s story, Get Real places its characters in a realistic ’90s landscape of unchecked homophobia, secret liaisons, hyper-masculinity and slow-moving social change. It was a play, and then a movie, every gay kid who came out or hid their light in fear during the ’90s could relate to: an upfront, honest and authentic depiction of the teenage gay experience in small-town Britain.

Unlike many gay coming-of-age movies of the time, Get Real wasn’t about the tragedy of being gay; it was about the strength, fears, hopes and the secret horniness of gay life as a teenager. It was about the shadow cast by HIV and AIDS over a whole new generation of LGBTQIA+ kids brought up under Thatcher’s Section 28 (a law that prohibited the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities, including schools), leading to unchecked and unchallenged homophobia, bullying and violence.

Steven Carter (Ben Silverstone) is a bright sixteen-year-old who is passionate about writing, secretive meetings with men in the local park toilets, and social change. Steven is proudly ‘out’ with his best mate Linda (Charlotte Brittain) but firmly in the closet with everyone else, and who can blame him? His school seems to think gay people don’t exist, and bullies home in on anyone different, free from challenge; even the school newspaper operates under strict censorship controls.

However, Steven’s world is about to change when he hooks up with the most popular guy in school, the heart-throb athlete John Dixon (Brad Gorton), following a random toilet encounter in the local park. Like him, John is firmly in the closet and desperate for the touch of another boy, but unlike Steven, John can’t risk his reputation as the school heart-throb and track star. That poses a problem for Steven because he has had just about enough of hiding; for Steven, it’s time to Get Real!

Get Real would hold its world premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1998, touring global festivals before a limited cinema release in 1999. However, like many LGBTQIA+ movies of the time, it wasn’t until Get Real arrived on VHS rental and DVD that it gained an audience. Since then, the film has become scarce, with only a few VHS copies and DVDs still available, and no dedicated streaming platform. Yet, Wilde and Shore’s film remains one of the best gay movies of the 1990s and a turning point in gay storytelling in British cinema.

Silverstone, Gorton, and Brittain are outstanding alongside a fabulous ensemble cast that includes David Lumsden, Jacquetta May, Richard Hawley, Kate McEnery, and Stacy Hart. But what makes Get Real so real is the exquisitely crafted screenplay, which joyously jettisons ’90s gay stereotypes and clichés in favour of an honest, upfront, and, at the time, groundbreaking depiction of the teenage gay experience.

Harold and Maude (1971)

By Neil Baker

To say Harold Chasen’s life is turbulent is an understatement; after all, he spends all his time devising new suicide scenarios while taunting his emotionally distant mother (Vivian Pickles). Harold (Bud Cort) is disturbed! But he is also looking for something we all seek at one time or another: the meaning of life.

Upon attending an individual’s funeral, he doesn’t know, Harold meets 79-year-old Maude (Ruth Gordon). Maude is a live wire —eccentric, kind, and mysterious —and to Harold, she is magnetic and beautiful. As Harold and Maude grow closer, they slowly become one as they explore the meaning of life and the foundations of love, friendship and companionship.

Harold and Maude may have bombed at the box office, but it has since earned cult status thanks to its wickedly sharp comedy, incredibly tender love story, and humanism. Alive with the music of Cat Stevens, Harold and Maude is a hilarious, heartbreaking, beautiful, and rare film that carries a deep, significant meaning —one that continues to resonate as two souls find each other in the right place at just the right time.

The Outsiders (1983)

By Neil Baker

Based on the 1967 novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders would launch the so-called ’80s Brat Pack. But despite a who’s-who of talent on screen, including Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, and a young Tom Cruise, the movie belongs to C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon and Ralph Macchio, and to the stunning cinematography of Stephen H. Burum.

Francis Ford Coppola’s exquisite journey into the no-man’s land between childhood and adulthood writhes with themes of class struggle, gang culture, brotherly love and confusion – its razor-sharp commentary a world away from the dulcet tones of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Stay Gold’ that opens the film.

The setting is Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the time period is the early 1960s. Here, two gangs — the Greasers and the Socs — find their allegiances and lives divided by wealth, educational opportunity, and family surname. But that doesn’t stop Ponyboy Curtis (C Thomas Howell) from falling for Cherry Valance (Diane Lane), a soc in all but name. But before you think this is a simple rewrite of West Side Story, Ponyboy’s best friend, Johnny (Ralph Macchio), accidentally kills a soc in self-defence.

Dally (Matt Dillon) gives them cash and tells Johnny and Ponyboy to get out of town, leading them to a dangerous, abandoned church where love, heroism, and tragedy await. The Outsiders is at its strongest when discussing the interface between poverty and opportunity. Here, the fault lines that still divide the United States are laid bare as we witness two boys explore the social barriers and restricted opportunities surrounding them in a story that shares many of the same beats as West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause.

As Ponyboy and Johnny hide in a church, it’s the poetry of Robert Frost and the words of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind that offer solace, the first offering a discussion on the fleeting beauty of youth and the second the nature of chivalry and masculinity. Johnny and Ponyboy are not just friends or gang acquaintances; they are two sides of the same coin and brothers in all but blood.

The Long Walk (2025)

By Calum Cooper

Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk is bloody, visceral and intense. Lawrence is no stranger to compelling dystopian pictures – he directed Catching Fire, the best Hunger Games film. Yet in helming this picture, Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner (Strange Darling) explore the ease with which people fall into willful compliance out of fear, as well as the bravery and endurance human beings can find under such duress. It’s a politically savvy thriller as well as terrific popcorn entertainment.

Based on the 1979 Stephen King book of the same name, the film is set in the future within a totalitarian United States – and let’s face it, in the age of Trump 2.0, that’s not difficult to imagine. Every year, the regime holds ‘The Long Walk’, a contest in which 50 young men must walk continuously at three miles per hour or faster. If they fall below that, or stop walking altogether, they face execution, with the contest only ending when one man is left.

Ray Garratty (Cooper Hoffman) is one of the contestants this year, as outlined by a superimposed letter in the film’s first frame. He joins despite his mother’s (Judy Greer) protests for deeply personal reasons. His fellow walkers include the streetwise Pete (David Jonsson of Rye Lane), the intelligent Hank (Ben Wang) and the erratic Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer). Under the eye of the chauvinistic Major (Mark Hamill), the men walk and walk, the drama emerging from the disturbing variables that, one by one, come into effect through exhaustion and oppression.

Similar to ‘The Hunger Games‘, ‘The Long Walk’ is essentially a spectacle made to keep the masses at bay while a totalitarian regime imposes its will. Ray has a personal vendetta of vengeance that compels him to compete, but when he sees the observing civilians (albeit not many of them) and comments on their complicity, Pete sagely observes, “We can’t be mad at people who are conditioned to think this is normal”. Where Ray is angry at the world, Pete instead views solidarity as a step forward – that class consciousness is key to overcoming fear and toppling those at the top, something that the film proves through the unusual but unmistakable camaraderie developed between many of the competitors. King’s book also explores these sentiments, and that was written nearly 50 years ago. Evidently, those themes were as prevalent then as they are now.

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Carrie (1976)

By Neil Baker

First published in 1973, Carrie White could be argued to be the character who made Stephen King. Coming just three years after the book’s massive success, Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Carrie is not only faithful to King’s material but also one of the greatest horrors ever made. However, like much of King’s work, supernatural terror is not the core of the horror; puberty, bullying, abuse and religious extremism are. 

King’s story and De Palma’s movie are a journey into isolation, family trauma, and teenage anxiety—a coming-of-age story with a horrific conclusion. De Palma keeps the camera on Carrie White throughout, allowing the audience to build empathy and understanding before the bloodshed of the final act.

Even as the bodies pile up at the Prom from hell, Carrie remains the victim of the piece. Often copied but never bettered, Carrie is a journey into the pain and torment of a girl who simply seeks understanding and kindness in a cold, cruel world.

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Kes (1969)

By Neil Baker

Ken Loach’s second feature film, Kes, would see him adapt Barry Hines’ novel A Kestrel for a Knave, working closely with the author to maintain the book’s themes. Here, Loach would explore the British education system and its failure to support working-class children, often forcing them into manual labour despite their skills and abilities.

Influenced by the ‘Kitchen Sink‘ movement and Italian neo-realism, Loach would craft a film bathed in documentary-like realism as he unpicked late ‘60s Britain and the class divide that haunted education, employment and opportunity. Loach beautifully captures the hostile environment surrounding young Billy and the moments of calm and solitude he finds through his Kestral, Kes, as the adult world threatens to derail his freedom. Loach layers Billy’s journey with moments of humour, love, and profound sadness as Kes lays bare the realities of poverty, class oppression and isolation. While we would hope things have now moved on, Billy’s life and Loach’s commentary sadly continue to feel all too relevant in Britain today.

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Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

By Sabastian Astley

Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause was a genuinely ground-breaking attempt at excavating the moral decay of America’s youth while pushing back against the conservative parenting styles of the nuclear family and their psychological effects on the coming generation. The title is adapted from Robert M. Lindner’s 1944 book Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath. But Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause would transcend the psychiatric insights of Lindner’s academic study as he explored the social psychology of the newly emerging ‘teenager’ and the perceived adult fears of juvenile delinquency and rebellion.

James Dean perfectly embodies the icon of the ‘youth in revolt’, combining his teenage disillusionment with a fragile masculinity held together tightly by Dean’s masterful performance. It’s an understatement to say that everything in Rebel Without a Cause has significance and meaning – from JD’s continual milk drinking to Plato’s masculine development throughout the film. It’s a surprisingly resistant text to the dominant ideology present in Hollywood at the time, questioning everything from the strength of the Nuclear Family to how masculinity is presented through archetypal male heroes. 

Rebel Without a Cause is a seminal text for understanding the rapidly changing American zeitgeist of the 1950s and 1960s, both on and off-screen. Yet, despite multiple Academy Award nominations, the film received mixed reviews upon its opening. Much of this was due to a contentious narrative many perceived as challenging traditional American values. For example, The New York Times would label it “violent, brutal and disturbing.”

However, decades later, Rebel Without a Cause remains a regularly dissected and analysed movie, with many commentators unpicking its themes, from masculinity and queerness to family structures and socio-political discussions. While many films of the classic Hollywood era are touted as ‘ground-breaking’ or ‘revolutionary,’ Rebel Without a Cause is one of the few films that genuinely earns this label.

Ray’s film captures a timeless coming-of-age story that still feels relevant today. It captures a zeitgeist that America may never have outgrown and continues to define its worldview and behaviour. But it also serves as an epitaph of the acting powerhouse that was James Dean, in what is undeniably one of his greatest performances. Dean takes the raw vulnerability of youth and his character’s fractured masculinity to a new level. The result places him alongside Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando as a leading pioneer of a method-acting approach that wowed a new generation.

The Dreamers (2003)

By Neil Baker

The ’60s would see a new generation define the Western world’s cultural landscape. This new generation was bold, creative, and driven by a collective need to break free from the sterility of the past. They rebelled against their parents’ view of the world and challenged traditional political thinking, while also giving birth to a new form of cinematic art and expressionism.

Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers is set during the student protests and riots that engulfed Paris in 1968, but this is no ordinary coming-of-age story of rebellion. Bertolucci’s narrative about art, film, and personal reinvention is driven by hormonal energy and sex. It’s about the need for escape and belonging, and the rebellious urge to redefine the boundaries of sex and love, as we follow Matthew (Michael Pitt), an American exchange student, and the free-spirited twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green).

Alive with hormonal energy, excitement and uncertainty, Bertolucci captures the vibrant colours of youth in a way few films have managed through the heat of infatuation and the joy and pain of sexual discovery. The Dreamers eloquently plays with expressionism and escape, and never hesitates to explore the blurred lines between art, sex, and cinema as American conservatism meets European liberalism on the streets of Paris.

Eighth Grade (2018)

By Sabastian Astley

Eighth Grade is unique; it captures a universal perspective on an immensely subjective experience. If you had said before 2018 that a male comedian in his late twenties would perfectly capture the feelings of a female middle-schooler in the online age, many, including me, would have scoffed. Yet, that is precisely what Bo Burnham achieved with his stunning directorial debut.

This treasure was crafted through Bo Burnham’s comedy routine over many years as he grappled with themes of sexuality, the sense of self, mental illness, and anxiety amidst an online audience. Maybe for that reason, Eighth Grade is one of the most anxiety-inducing films I have ever watched, a trait typically reserved for terrifying horror or heart-pumping thrillers. Of course, for some, Eighth Grade is a horror as it puts the terror of mingling as a teen on full display, with a grossly honest depiction of how truly awkward adolescence is.

In interviews, Burnham commented on the importance of the eighth grade (Year 9 in the UK) as a crucial year for forming self-awareness, and perhaps that’s what makes the film strangely terrifying. We walk alongside Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) as she struggles with social connections, yearns to return to childhood and desperately seeks adult experiences. It is as if Burnham somehow bottled the modern essence of being thirteen before releasing it on an unsuspecting audience. The way that Kayla, Olivia, and Gabe interact is authentic, as are the anxieties and uncertainties with an internet-age bow.

However, for all of Burnham’s mastery, newcomer Fisher was the real star. Bo decided on Elsie because “she was the only one who felt like a shy kid pretending to be confident – everyone else felt like a confident kid pretending to be shy.” That statement alone reflects the experience of so many of us. I don’t believe we ever stop pretending to be confident – fake it till you make it, right? This is why Eighth Grade is such a heart-pounding experience. It feels like you’ve been dropped into a nightmare from secondary school, and you’re perpetually in fight-or-flight mode. You desperately want to reach out and tell Kayla, “This will pass,” just as you wished someone had told you the same. 

One of Eighth Grade’s most fascinating assets to this day is Anna Meredith’s soundtrack, where scenes pulsate with electronic melodies and technological sonnets. In Meredith’s musical world, each sound underscores the emotions that Kayla emits throughout the film to her online audience and friends. But when she finally speaks with her dad, it’s silent, her fire-side chat with Mark (Josh Hamilton), the film’s beating heart.

White Squall (1996)

By Neil Baker

Some films vanish without a trace for no real reason, and White Squall is one of those movies. Directed by Ridley Scott with an all-star cast of up-and-coming actors, including Scott Wolf, Ryan Phillippe, Balthazar Getty, Jeremy Sisto and Ethan Embry, White Squall should have knocked the ball out of the park on its theatrical release. Despite being led by Jeff Bridges, Caroline Goodall, and John Savage and distributed by Hollywood Studios (Disney), White Squall was the second Ridley Scott movie to flop in a row, following 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992).

In 1961, thirteen teenage boys set off for a year in the Caribbean on the Ocean Academy Albatross schooner. Under the guidance of their Captain, Christopher Sheldon (Jeff Bridges), and his wife, Dr Alice Sheldon (Caroline Goodall), the boys would learn teamwork, mathematics, seamanship, and more as they worked together across the Ocean. However, in 1961, the Albatross was hit by a reported White Squall, and the boy’s journey and education ended in tragedy. Scott’s fictionalised account of the journey plays fast and loose with the facts but is elevated by the outstanding performances of its young cast. 

White Squall is, in essence, a coming-of-age movie about the bonds of brotherhood, the expectations of masculinity that are often difficult to navigate in youth, and the desperate need to escape to find oneself.

The Plague (2025)

By Neil Baker

Many of us carry deep scars from our childhood and adolescence. Sometimes these scars are deep and easily reopen into wounds throughout our lives; other times, they heal but leave a reminder. Either way, many of us have them. Adults encourage the view that children are angelic, innocent, and unsure of their actions, even when we all know, from our own experiences, that many kids can be cruel, ruthless, and unrelenting in their hatred of other children.

As adults, we know that school corridors can be a deadly maze of bullying and intimidation, just as we know that school toilets can be a quiet, adult-free space to humiliate, attack or oppress. We know that far too many young people continue to be pushed into self-harm, feelings of suicide and depression due to the toxic behaviours of other kids around them, usually forged through equally poisonous parenting. Yet we all too often choose to ignore these behaviours, with throwaway sayings like “kids will be kids” or unhelpful advice like “you need to stand up to people.” Adults are too often willing bystanders to the plague of bullying that surrounds them.  

Based on director Charlie Polinger’s own experiences at a summer camp in his early teens, though fictitious in its characters and story, the story may centre on early adolescent male behaviour. Still, the experiences relate to both girls and boys in the isolation and torment Ben and Eli face. After all, anyone who has worked with kids knows that girls can be equally as cruel as boys. In my view, this film isn’t about toxic male behaviour as some reviewers have suggested, but the toxicity of adults who would rather turn the other way or spout excuses than challenge the plague of bullying that leaves indelible scars on far too many of our kids: male and female.

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