12 Hit Movies That People Mistakenly Call Cult Films

We’ve all got our own little pet peeves. Here is one of mine: People calling things “cult movies” that are in no way cult movies.

Admittedly, that term is often a subject of much dispute; not everyone agrees on what is or isn’t a cult object. I tend to subscribe to a definition of the term close to the one laid out by Ernest Mathijs, the co-editor of The Cult Film Reader, in Cineaste Magazine...

A film is not born a cult film. It becomes one by accident, through a public reception that is celebrated in a sectarian way—this is after all why we use the term “cult.” In most cases such a celebration develops gradually after a film’s release, after the initial, “normal” trajectory has met with hostile or unfavorable reactions, and has changed into a remarkable social phenomenon of rabid devotion or subversive, subcultural alignment.

To me, a true cult film is something that fits that description in some way. You can’t set out to make a cult film, because a cult film is made by an audience — and usually by one that discovers it gradually after an underwhelming initial release.

And so the 12 titles below — all of which I found included in online lists of cult films on major websites including IMDb, or featured in the “Cult Movies” sections on various streaming services like Tubi — would decidedly not qualify. Disagree if you’d like; to me, none of these are cult films.