Definition:
Before a single frame plays, an audience already has expectations. Genre is the system of categories, conventions, and shared codes that sets those expectations. Action, drama, comedy, horror, science fiction, documentary: these labels tell audiences what kind of experience they are signing up for and filmmakers what rules they are working within or against.
What It Means in Movies:
Genre functions as a contract between a film and its audience. A horror film promises certain kinds of tension, certain kinds of threat, certain formal devices designed to produce fear. When a horror film delivers on that contract, the audience is satisfied. When it subverts it deliberately, the audience is surprised. When it fails to deliver without subverting anything, the audience is disappointed.
Why It Matters:
Genre is the primary organisational language of the film industry. It shapes how a film is marketed, how it is distributed, how it is reviewed, and which awards it is eligible for. The debate over whether a film belongs to one genre or another is rarely just aesthetic. It is commercial and political.
Example:
Get Out began its marketing campaign as a horror film and was released as one. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and generated sustained academic discussion about race, power, and social allegory. Its genre classification shaped how audiences approached it and how critics evaluated it.