10 Best Romantic Movies on Netflix a Twilight Fan Must Watch

By Twilight Vibes · Updated September 2026

Most "movies like Twilight" lists go looking for vampires. They hand you a stack of supernatural teen romances and call it a day, as if the fangs were the point.

They weren't. What kept people rewatching was the wanting. The held breath. Two people orbiting each other in a permanently overcast town, every conversation loaded, nobody able to just say the thing. That feeling is still driving the Twilight renaissance two decades on, and you don't need a coven to find it.

So this list is built around that instead. Some of these are teen romances. One's a Nora Ephron classic. One is about a 1950s dressmaker and will annoy you if you're in a light mood. What they share is atmosphere, chemistry with friction in it, and the ache that made you sit through New Moon more than once.

1. Through My Window (2022)

Raquel's been quietly obsessed with Ares for years — the impossibly wealthy boy next door who barely registers she exists. His family thinks she's beneath them. She watches him through her bedroom window, and somehow the film makes that feel almost normal.

Of everything on this list, this one copies Twilight's actual blueprint the closest. Ordinary girl, unreachable boy, a family that disapproves, a romance that runs almost entirely on stolen glances before either of them manages a full sentence. Honestly, if a friend's never seen Twilight and you're trying to explain the Bella-Edward thing, just put this on instead.

Ares runs hot and cold in a way that'll either feel delicious or set off every red flag you own, depending on your patience for rich boys who don't text back. Setting-wise it's the one real departure from Forks — Barcelona, sun-drenched, way more balconies than rain.

2. 20th Century Girl (2022)

1999, South Korea. Bo-ra promises her best friend she'll scout out a boy while the friend's abroad for heart surgery. What follows is a first-love story told mostly through a camcorder and a landline, with an almost cruel amount of restraint.

You're not really here for happy endings, if we're honest — you're here for the ache, and this film knows exactly how to find it. It gets what Twilight got too: the moments that hurt most are usually the ones where nobody says anything out loud.

It's a proper slow burn, built on mistaken identity and bad timing rather than any real villain — which somehow makes it worse. Everything's sun-faded and nostalgic, school hallways and old technology, gentle for most of its runtime before it turns merciless in the last twenty minutes.

3. About Time (2013)

Tim finds out on his twenty-first birthday that the men in his family can travel back through their own lives. Naturally, the first thing he does with that power is try to get a girlfriend.

Twilight always had this undercurrent about immortality — what loving someone means when time doesn't move the same way for both of you. About Time asks that same question minus the vampires, and somehow it lands harder for it. The romance itself is sweet enough, but the last act turns into something about a father and son that'll wreck you a little.

The relationship here is warm and, unusually for the genre, actually functional — these two just like each other. The tension comes from time itself, not from either of them behaving badly. Rainy London, a house by the Cornish coast, that particular Richard Curtis coziness running through the whole thing.

4. The Half of It (2020)

Ellie Chu ghostwrites other students' essays for cash, stuck in a small dull town she can't wait to leave. A well-meaning jock pays her to write love letters to a girl he likes — and Ellie, who happens to have her own feelings about that girl, takes the job anyway.

The small-town claustrophobia is spot on: grey, rain-soaked, nobody around who actually gets you. And underneath it all, this is a movie about longing said through writing, which is about as Bella Swan as it gets.

It's a love triangle, but a fairly thoughtful one — less about who wins and more about what each person wants to be seen as. The friendship at its centre ends up mattering more than either romance. Quiet, bookish, a little melancholy, lots of overcast sky and long walks.

5. To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)

Lara Jean writes letters to every boy she's ever loved and stashes them in a hatbox — never meant to be sent. They get mailed anyway. Chaos follows, then a fake-dating arrangement, then the usual complications.

This is the comfort watch on the list — butterflies, zero emotional damage. It also does something Twilight quietly did well and rarely got credit for: putting an introverted, slightly awkward girl at the centre of a romance without turning her into the joke.

Fake dating tips over into real feelings, handled with a light hand throughout. Peter Kavinsky earned his generational-crush status for a simple reason — he's kind. A nice break if the brooding-boy archetype has worn thin lately. Visually it's bright and cosy, Pacific Northwest-adjacent, which will feel familiar to anyone coming from Forks.

6. Phantom Thread (2017)

A meticulous, controlling dressmaker in 1950s London meets a young waitress and pulls her into his tightly closed-off world. She refuses to stay in the role he's built for her.

This one's for anyone whose favourite part of Twilight was the danger — that sense a love like this could actually consume someone. Phantom Thread is about obsession and control, two people locked in a power struggle they both, in some twisted way, enjoy. Gorgeous, strange, far darker than the costumes let on.

It's toxic, and the film knows exactly what it's doing — it never tries to be a cautionary tale. What it's really watching is two people who found the exact wrong person to be right for. Uncomfortable to sit through. Weirdly, still romantic. Hushed, immaculate, muted colours, a house where everyone speaks in whispers.

7. Cruel Intentions (1999)

Two wealthy Manhattan step-siblings make a bet over seducing their headmaster's daughter. It goes exactly as badly as you'd guess — then worse.

This is the flip side of the romantic coin: love used as a weapon instead of a refuge. It also has something the Twilight films had plenty of — total, unembarrassed commitment to melodrama. Nobody here underplays a single thing, and honestly, that's the appeal.

It plays manipulative first, then unexpectedly sincere, and that shift is really the whole engine of the film — Ryan Phillippe's character actually falling for real is what drives it. Wrapped in late-90s excess throughout: marble staircases, cigarettes, a soundtrack that's aged better than it should have. Dated in spots, gleefully so in others.

8. Voicemails for Isabelle (2026)

Jill's sister Isabelle dies, and Jill keeps calling her number anyway — long, oversharing, 3 a.m. voicemails about her collapsing life as a pastry chef in San Francisco. What she doesn't know: the number's been reassigned to Wes, a real estate agent in Austin, who listens to every single one and falls for her.

It's a romance built entirely on imagination — Wes falls for a woman he's never seen, pieced together out of her voice and her worst days. That's the Bella-and-Edward setup with the fangs removed: wanting someone you have no real claim to, and knowing it the whole time.

Grief comes first here, romance second. Zoey Deutch plays Jill funny and raw at once, which is trickier than it looks, and the film never lets the jokes off the hook for the sadness sitting underneath them. Warm kitchens, bad dates, a phone lighting up in the dark. Sat at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes across 58 reviews — the best any Netflix romance managed this year.

9. People We Meet on Vacation (2026)

Two best friends take one trip together every summer for a decade — until something finally breaks the pattern. Adapted from Emily Henry's novel, and it picked up an Outstanding Television Movie Emmy nomination.

Friends-to-lovers doesn't get slower-burn than this: years of proximity, nothing ever said out loud. If the part of Twilight that hooked you was everything before anything actually happened, this is built out of that exact stretch and not much else. The timeline hops between trips, so you spend the whole runtime watching two people almost get there, again and again, and not.

Sun-drenched, travel-brochure pretty — easily the least moody thing on this list. Save it for a night you want the opposite of rain.

10. Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

A widower's young son calls a radio show to talk about his dad. A journalist across the country hears the broadcast and can't shake the voice. The two leads barely share the same room for the whole film.

Two reasons this one belongs here. First, the Pacific Northwest setting — Seattle's a real Twilight-adjacent destination, about four hours from Forks, and the film is soaked in that same coastal grey. Second, and this is the bigger one: it might be the purest study of longing mainstream cinema has produced — a whole romance held up on wanting, with barely any actual contact.

It's almost entirely imagined, and that's the point — they're not really falling for each other so much as for the idea of each other, and the film's smart enough to know that's both romantic and a little foolish. Rain on windows, houseboats, a soundtrack full of standards. Cosy in that specific way only early-90s films manage.

If You Only Watch One

Depends on the mood, honestly. Quick version:

• Closest to Twilight's exact energy: Through My Window
• Want to cry: 20th Century Girl
• Want comfort, no damage: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

And if you're deep enough into the rewatch spiral that you're seriously considering going back to the source material again — no judgement, we've all been there. Our guide to the correct Twilight watch order is there when you need it, and if you're trying to settle a very old argument along the way, the Team Edward vs Team Jacob case still holds up.

Common Questions

Got a pick we missed? We update this list as Netflix's catalogue shifts, and it shifts a lot. Drop us a line and tell us what belongs here.