A cult film is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but relatively small group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside of the small fanbases, however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame amongst mainstream audiences, including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Taxi Driver (1976), The Warriors (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Blue Velvet (1986), and Pulp Fiction (1994). Many cult movies have gone on to transcend their original cult status and have become recognized as classics; others are of the "so bad it's good" variety, and are destined to remain in obscurity. Cult films often become the source of a thriving, obsessive, and elaborate subculture of fandom, hence the analogy to cults. However, not every film with a rabid fanbase is necessarily a cult film.

The term cult film is used to describe a film that has had little to no success commercially and critically upon its initial release but has later spawned a small, but devoted and usually obsessive fanbase, however there are various exceptions. One exception is Napoleon Dynamite (2004), which was a success at the box office. This has led to a misconception in Cult classic films that the definition is a film that 'you either love or hate'. The term was first coined in the early 1980s in the book Cult Movies, by Danny Peary and is continued to be used to describe the films to this day. Usually, cult films have limited but very special, noted appeal. Cult films are often known to be eccentric, and do not follow traditional standards of mainstream cinema and usually explore topics not considered in any way mainstream—yet there are examples that are relatively normal. They are often considered controversial because they step outside standard narrative and technical conventions known.