Abigail (2019)
Alternate Reality/Steampunk and Magic
Russian film that creates a fascinating alternate reality where Steampunk and magic blend in an almost familiar world
Young Adult
Young Adult is a term from publishing that refers to works of fiction intended for readers between age 12 and 18 (that is intended audience, although actual readership can be of any age). The term has been adopted to also refer to films adapted from these works.
The genre saw a huge upsurge since the 2000s with the success of the Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games films. The 2000s/10s period saw the rights to many YA book franchises purchased for adaptation, although the number of these series that have been successful on screen are far outweighed by the number that have never managed to go beyond a single film. There are other works that the label Young Adult can be applied to retrospectively.
Young Adult films will feature protagonists who are usually in their teens (although ages can range from between pre-adolescence to early twenties). Many of these are Coming of Age Stories concerning the move from childhood to adulthood.
In Young Adult cinema, protagonists frequently (although not necessarily always) will be a locus at the centre of world-changing events, a social revolution or be engaged in a titanic struggle against the Big Bad of the show. They may well have some form of great destiny heaped upon their shoulders. Or else they may simply be a protagonist at the centre of a series of ongoing adventures.
A romantic element will frequently be placed at the centre of the show – this is the standard romance one might find in any other work but here having been moved to centre stage where the protagonist (who is frequently female) faces divided choices.
The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box (2014)
Victorian Young Adult Adventure
Yet another adaptation of a series of Young Adult fantasy books that failed to fly. The idea of an Indiana Jones-type adventure set in Victorian England holds promise but the film only sporadically manages to let the adventure fly
Allegiant (2016)
Young Adult Dystopian Future
The Divergent series is a fundamentally implausible scenario for people that think horoscopes are a profound insight into human nature. This is the most interesting of the films and gives us an imaginative future world
Aquamarine (2006)
Mermaid Teen Romantic Comedy
Young Adult fantasy in which two girls befriend a mermaid. A film very much made for teenage girls, bubbly, silly and lightweight
Artemis Fowl (2020)
Young Adult/Child Genius vs the Magical Underworld
Adaptation of the popular Young Adult series about a twelve-year-old super-villain and his adventures with assorted magical creatures. Audiences hated this but I though it overspilled with a madcap creativity
A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting (2020)
Monster-Hunting Babysitters/Young Adult
Adapted from a Young Adult series of books, this is a bland and utterly superficial film about a secret society of monster-hunting babysitters
Beautiful Creatures (2013)
Young Adult/War Between Witches
Attempt to create another Twilight franchise that quickly becomes the anti-Twilight, shucking the pro-chastity message for a decidedly inflammatory stance against small-minded Christian prejudice
Before I Fall (2017)
Timeloop/Young Adult
Essentially Groundhog Day for teenage girls as Zoey Deutch finds herself trapped in a timeloop living the same day at high school over and over. The film finds a reasonable emotional depth but some of Zoey’s concerns do seem just a little trivial
Bolt Neck (1999)
High School Frankenstein
The amusing idea of the Frankenstein story relocated to a modern high school – and with no less than later-to-be superstar Ryan Reynolds as the monster
Bones and All (2022)
Young Adult Cannibalism Film
Suspiria director Luca Guadagnino sinks his teeth into making a film about cannibalism. Forget the Young Adult label the film was sold with, this is quite an impressive work
Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)
Twilight Sequel/Vampire Marriage and Pregnancy
The point where the Twilight series collapses under its pretensions and draws every detail of its wedding out for an excruciating hour. A series that has been all about preaching chastity then segues into Right to Life advocacy
Breaking Dawn Part Two (2012)
Twilight Sequel/Vampire Romance
Perhaps the best thing about this is that the Twilight saga is finally ended. This provides a moderately spectacular showdown but also wraps its plotlines up with absurd deus ex machina wimp outs and an infuriating twist ending
The Changeover (2017)
Young Adult/Teen Witch's Journey
Adaptation of a book by NZ author Margaret Mahy. Mahy has a sublimely poetic turn of phrase in the writing but the film strips the book down to the point we get no more than a by-the-numbers Young Adult work
Chaos Walking (2021)
Planet Where Thoughts Are Visible
Doug Liman’s adaptation of a Young Adult series that was problem-ridden behind the scenes. This certainly creates an interesting scenario set on a planet where men’s thoughts are visibly manifest
A Cinderella Story (2004)
Modernised Cinderella
A contemporary take on Cinderella that relocates the story to a modern high school with a downtrodden Hillary Duff trying to make it to the prom
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (2009)
Young Adult/Vampire Wars/Circus of Freaks
Adaptation of a series of Young Adult books that should have emerged as Harry Potter made with the sensibilities of a Tim Burton. But the result fails to come to life in Paul Weitz’s hands
City of Ember (2008)
Young Adult/Underground City
Excellent Young Adult adapted work about teenagers in a vast underground city coming to an awareness of the forgotten surface world. The underground world is a production designer’s marvel
Crater (2023)
Coming of Age Story on The Moon
A surprisingly better than expected film from the Disney Channel, a Coming of Age story set on The Moon about a group of kids who break out to go on a jaunt across the lunar surface
The Darkest Minds (2018)
Young Adult/Psychically Powered Kids on the Run
Adapted from a series of Young Adult books concerning a group of children with psychic powers on the run in a dystopian future, this failed to find the audience it sought
The Death Cure (2018)
Young Adult/Dystopian-Post-Holocaust Adventure
The Maze Runner was a solid Young Adult effort that built out an effective Conceptual Breakthrough story; this, the second of two sequels, feeld like a series of canned action scenes in search of a purpose
Descendants (2015)
The Children of Disney Villains
This has an appealing premise – the children of all the Disney villains have grown up and go to school together. This is promptly killed by the awfulness of the film itself, which is essentially High School Musical set in the Disney universe
Descendants 2 (2017)
The Children of Disney Villains
Sequel to the painfully bad Disney Channel film that copied the success of High School Musical and featured the teenage children of classic Disney animated villains. This is just as empty-headed and unwatchable
Divergent (2014)
Young Adult Dystopian Future
Designed as a copycat of The Hunger Games, this Young Adult film as a modest hit. The premise is fundamentally implausible as human psychology – and when there’s no basic credibility, you cease to care about the contrived dramatics
Down a Dark Hall (2018)
Sinister Happenings at a Girls’ Boarding School
Rodrigo Cortes, who made the fine Buried, directs a Young Adult horror, which is produced by no less than Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, concerning supernatural happenings at a girl’s boarding school.
Eclipse (2010)
Twilight Sequel/Vampire Romance
The third of the Twilight films. This extrudes the dramatic irresolution of the last film’s cliffhanger – should Bella marry Edward or does she really love Jacob? – with over-padded momentousness
Every Day (2018)
Young Adult/Being That Wakes Up in a Different Body Every Day
Don’t be put off by the Young Adult label. Look past this and you will end up with one of the most original premises and one of the most beautifully written films seen in some time.
Fallen (2016)
Young Adult/Angel-Mortal Romance
Adaption of a Young Adult series of books – this is essentially Twilight but with angels instead of vampires. Another YA effort where we never saw successive chapters due to its box-office flop
The 5th Wave (2016)
Alien Invasion/Young Adult
Wannabe in the fad for Young Adult films. An alien invasion story that takes place without drama or engagement in anything that happens. This seems more interested in its teen love triangle than combatting the alien threat
The Gemini Factor (1987)
Mysterious Link Between Twins
Modest and well-made British children’s tv mini-series about the mysterious psychic connection between two twins each unaware of the other’s existence
The Giver (2014)
Young Adult Dystopia
Another adaptation of a classic Young Adult book, this merely substitutes well-worn dystopian tropes and comes out feeling like Divergent by way of Pleasantville
The Golden Compass (2007)
Epic Fantasy Adventure
The attempt to create another Lord of the Rings went astray with this adaptation of Philip Pulllman’s fantasy series, which cut many of the core elements of the books so as not to offend religious conservatives
The Hole (2009)
Kids Open a Portal/Young Adult Horror
One of the less known films of Joe Dante. A 3D work that just predates Avatar, it is a YA horror story in the vein of The Goonies or Dante’s own Explorers crafted with care and an affection for the characters
The Host (2013)
Alien Body Snatchers
Andrew Niccol, a director of smart conceptual sf, seems mismatched on an adaptation of a Stephenie Meyer novel but Niccol tones down Meyer’s overripe teen romance to deliver a smart take on the alien body snatchers genre
The House With a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
Boy and His Eccentric Warlock Uncle
Eli Roth is a director associated with the Torture Porn cycle and one does a double-take at him making a family-friendly film. The results emerge somewhere between Harry Potter and a Goosebumps film
How I Live Now (2013)
England Invaded/Outbreak of Nuclear War
While the title suggests a self-help manual about someone going to live off the land, this depicts an imaginary invasion of England similar to Red Dawn having been pitched as a Young Adult work
The Hunger Games (2012)
Future Televised Human Hunting
A Young Adult box-office hit that does little more than competently shuffle around ideas from other SF films. Jennifer Lawrence makes an impressive showing but the film also soft-pedals the moral reality of its scenario
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
Future Televised Human Hunting/Social Revolution
The first sequel to the box-office juggernaut. The surprise is that it spends defies most of the things that made the first film, not to mention has made one of the year’s biggest box-office hits into a parable for Marxist revolution
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014)
Future Social Revolution
The third The Hunger Games film starts in with a more brooding complexity but with the book being split in two parts, the story feels more thinly drawn and comes to an abrupt end just when it starts to get interesting
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015)
Future Social Revolution
The finale of the saga comes with a tough, gritty edge that make it the best directed of the series. On the other hand, it builds well only to arrive at an ending that goes oddly sideways and throws sympathies to the wind
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
Future Televised Human Hunting
The Hunger Games was one of the biggest franchise of the 2010s. Here a number of the key talents return to make a prequel to the events, telling a story from the early days of the Hunger Games
I Am Number Four (2011)
Alien Teenager on Earth/Young Adult
Produced by Michael Bay and directed by the perpetually insipid D.J. Caruso, this is no more than a Young Adult high school version of Disney’s Witch Mountain films concerning an alien teenager with psi powers
I Still See You (2018)
Young Adult/Ghostly Remnants in the Aftermath of a Catastrophe
A Young Adult film that comes with a highly original premise concerning the aftermath of a catastrophe that has left ghostly figures trapped in timeloops repeating the same moves
iBoy (2017)
Teen Gets the Power to Mentally Access Internet Traffic
A British film about a teen who gets a cellphone embedded in his head and develops the ability to tap into cellular and internet traffic. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes with an admirably gritty edge
Insurgent (2015)
Young Adult Dystopian Future
Divergent, the first entry in this Young Adult dystopian series, a poor man’s Hunger Games, failed the “I can’t hold any suspension of disbelief” test. This offers more of the same, plus lots of random effects sequences
Kiki’s Delivery Service (2014)
Young Witch's Adventures
NOT the Hayao Miyazaki film but a live-action version based on the same books, made by Takashi Shimizu of the Jun-on/The Grudge films fame. Replicating Miyazaki in live-action is a futile endeavour
Left Behind – Vanished: Next Generation (2016)
Young Adult/Christian Rapture Film
There have been the various adaptations of the Left Behind books about the Biblical Rapture; this is an attempt to spin the same off for Young Adult audiences and is not very good
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)
Timeloop Film
The fourth variant on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme one to come out in the space of 12 months, this nevertheless wrings some charms from the premise
Maximum Ride (2016)
Young Adult/Genetically Engineered Children
In between the hugely successful Young Adult adaptations of the 00s/10s there has been another trail of YA adaptations that never made it beyond one film. Adapted from a YA series by crime writer James Patterson about a group of kids with wings, this is an exceedingly lacklustre production
The Maze Runner (2014)
Young Adult/Maze World/Conceptual Breakthrough Story
One of the better among the current fad for Young Adult dystopian SF works post-The Hunger Games. This dispenses with dystopian Coming of Age stories and gives us a fascinating conceptual mystery even if the answers prove underwhelming
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Secret Home for "Gifted" Youths
Tim Burton used to be the great hope of fantastic cinema but his efforts since 2000 have been greeted with general disappointment. This Young Adult adaptation plays out like a fantasy version of the X-Men
Mortal Engines (2018)
Post-Holocaust World of Mobile Cities
Peter Jackson written-produced film that creates a fascinatingly original world. As always with a Jackson film, all the fun is in the massively scaled effects sequences and the design of the world. Alas, Jackson is not as well attuned in the story department, which often drags up corny cliched scenes
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)
Secret World of Magic Amid the Everyday
A Young Adult fantasy adaptation that fells a Harry Potter wannabe repackaged with the brooding teen romanticism of the Twilight series, all under a director whose indifferent handling fails to animate any of the material
The Moth Diaries (2011)
Possible Vampire in a Girl's Boarding School
Interesting attempt to rewrite Carmilla for the Twilight crowd. In fact, this is a film that features more credible teenage girls and is far more successful as a horror film and at creating uncanny mood than the Twilight films were
My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2022)
Possession Film
Possession film that is quite a bit more than the light fluffy Young Adult film the title makes it seem, boosted by a great performance from Amiah Miller
New Moon (2009)
Twilight Sequel/Vampire Romance
The second of the Twilight films where the moderately grounded original is blown up into the near laughable with the ridiculously over-the-top hyper-sexualised posturing of its male leads
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)
Greek Myth in the Present Day
Chris Columbus seeks to emulate the success of the Harry Potter films with this adaptation of a Young Adult series about the children of Greek gods. The film falls apart due to Columbus’s typical banal cues and effects overkill
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013)
Greek Myth in the Present Day
This sequel is marginally better than the first film (largely due to Chris Columbus no longer being in the director’s chair), being more dramatically engaged and with effects that feel less like random eye candy. That still doesn’t disguise the fact that the Percy Jackson series is no more than a lightweight and forgettable Harry Potter knockoff
The Portable Door (2023)
Apprentice in a Magical Company
A story about an apprentice at a mysterious company that deals with magic, this could well serve as a fix for those wanting something more of the Harry Potter franchise
Rim of the World (2019)
Young Adult/Alien Invasion
McG, one of the more empty-headed of modern mainstream directors, makes a big effects-heavy, Young Adult alien invasion film, a genre that has never enjoyed any success. To no surprise, this did not either
Robot Overlords (2014)
Earth After Invasion by Alien Machines
While the title sounds like a cheesy faux B movie, this a surprisingly serious work. Taking undeniable influence from tv’s The Tripods , it is a YA work about the fight to free Earth following a machine invasion that proves far more entertaining than anything one expects of it
The Scorch Trials (2015)
Young Adult/Post-Holocaust Adventure
The Maze Runner was one of the better Young Adult films, creating an intriguing conceptual mystery; this sequel ignores all of that, even throws the book out and is essentially a jumble of random sf tropes that amount to no more than running, shooting and things exploding
The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (2007)
Epic Fantasy Adventure
Adaptation of Susan Cooper’s popular fantasy series handled by people who have no interest in the material and badly rewrite/mangle it in order try to turn it into a Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings knockoff
Seventh Son (2014)
Epic Fantasy/Monster Hunter's Apprentice
An object lessons in how not to adapt a Young Adult series – take a book series about an apprentice witch hunter set in an alternate England and turn it a generic Lord of the Rings copy
The Space Between Us (2017)
First Kid Born on Mars Comes to Earth
Following the huge success of films like Gravity and The Martian that portray space travel with scrupulous realism, this can be considered the Young Adult version. It pays surprising attention to getting its science right; on the other hand, that doesn’t excuse the gaping implausibilities elsewhere
Spontaneous (2020)
Exploding Teenagers Comedy
Witty and really hilarious film about a high school class where teens begin randomly exploding. With great performances and writing that is a delight to the ears
Stormbreaker (2006)
Teenage Spy
Film adaptation of a popular series of Young Adult books about a teenage spy. Made not long after the Austin Powers films, this seems unable to decide if it is being serious or a parody
The Thinning (2016)
Future Education System Eliminates Failed Students
Another variant on the Young Adult dystopia a la The Hunger Games and Divergent films, concerning a future where that who fail standardised school tests are executed to keep the population down. The blandness of approach utterly feels to grapple with the ideas at play
The Three Investigators in the Secret of Terror Castle (2009)
Juvenile Detectives Investigate a Spooky Mansion
The Three Investigators books were an essential part of my youth. This does a fair job of remaining faithful to the stories, albeit with the addition of some grating modernisations, and creates reasonable atmosphere as they investigate a seemingly spooky mansion
Tomorrow When the War Began (2010)
Australia Invaded/Teenagers Fight Back
An Australian version of Red Dawn – prettily mounted but feels more like Dawson’s Creek Goes to War than it has does a realistic war film
The Tripods [Season 1] (1984)
Earth After an Alien Invasion
Classic tv mini-series about rebellion in a future where Earth is controlled by giant alien tripod machines, this still holds up as something great today
Twilight (2008)
Vampire Romance
Before the teen idol phenomenon took over, the original in the massively popular Young Adult series works as an earnest romance where all involved are clearly making an effort to play with a conviction
Vampire Academy (2014)
School for Vampires
One has zero enthusiasm for this, which has been sold as Twilight meets Harry Potter. Defying expectation, it is written with a sarcastic amusement puncturing its own seriousness and has a great performance from its leading lady, if in the end it is too weighted down by story exposition needed to set up its sequels to ever open up dramatically
War of the Worlds: The Attack (2023)
Alien Invasion/H.G. Wells Adaptation/Young Adult
The idea of H.G. Wells’ classic alien invasion novel rewritten with a Young Adult focus makes you cringe but the idea works in its own way
Warm Bodies (2013)
Zombie Romantic Comedy
The idea of a Twilight copy where the lead male is a zombie seems an utterly lame idea before one sat down to watch this. That said, the film manages to make its peculiarly incongruous mix of teen romantic film, zombie film and comedy work for it
When Marnie Was There (2014)
Anime/Ghost Story
A ghost story from Studio Ghibli – although rather than any Western equivalent that sets out to scare the pants off us, this is a sweetly tender story of friendship between two girls. The result more than capably approaches some of Hayao Miyazaki’s best
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
Young Adult/Magical Journey Across the Universe
High-profile adaptation of the classic children’s work by Madeline L’Engle that has been entirely wrenched out of shape by its director to become a heavy-handed message about diversity. It is SF made by people who think the genre is just eye candy and absurdly over-the-top costumes
Z for Zachariah (2015)
Post-Holocaust Love Triangle
This starts promisingly but it soon becomes apparent the classic story, which only takes place between two people, has been rewritten for the Young Adult audience with the addition of a third character and the focus on a love triangle, while abandoning most of the book’s themes
Zombie Town (2023)
R.L. Stine Adaptation/Zombies Emerge Out of a Film
An adaptation of an R.L. Stine book, a work of safe anodyne horror about zombies trapped inside a film made by director Dan Aykroyd getting loose and overrunning a town