Film Subgenres: What They Are and How They Work

The difference between genre and subgenre

Before diving into subgenres, it’s important to first have a complete understanding of what film genres are on a fundamental level. The easiest way to think about genre is as a category or type of film distinguished by its story, substance, and style. For example, narrative versus documentary is a difference in medium and form, whereas horror versus action is a difference in genre.

Once you feel comfortable with genres, subgenres are the next logical step. As the name implies, subgenres are more specific and more niche categories within genres. A subgenre slots cleanly within and builds upon the parent genre, narrowing its scope. For example, as a genre, comedy can encompass an incredibly broad range of films—but a subgenre, such as slapstick, spoof, or stoner comedy, hones in on a more specific slice of cinema.

Subgenre examples and flow

Subgenres always sit within a broader genre, and they can even fit inside other subgenres depending upon how hyper-specific they are. In this sense, you can think of them like Russian nesting dolls, with the largest doll being the parent genre.

Subgenres can also contain genre fusions and crossovers, and an individual film may progress through different genres or subgenres over the course of its runtime. Take, for instance, unpredictable films such as “Parasite” (2019, dir. Bong Joon-ho), which moves from dark comedy-drama to suspenseful class thriller, or “Bone Tomahawk” (2015, dir. S. Craig Zahler), which traverses from epic Western to cannibal horror.

As an example from most general to most specific, a genre-to-subgenre taxonomy might look like: action → martial arts → wuxia.

• Action: As a parent genre, action can encompass everything from “The Avengers” (2012, dir. Joss Whedon) to “Saving Private Ryan” (1998, dir. Steven Spielberg), each of which represents a distinct action subgenre: superhero movies and war films, respectively.
  • Martial arts: The martial arts subgenre hones in on hand-to-hand fighting and combat with melee weapons such as swords and spears. Though much more specific than the broader action genre, this subgenre can still encompass films as drastically different as “Drunken Master II” (1994, dir. Lau Kar-leung) and “The Raid: Redemption” (2011, dir. Gareth Evans). Both are packed with thrilling fight scenes but are still far apart in terms of tone and style: The former is a period piece fused with the slapstick comedy subgenre, while the latter is set in the modern day and has a far grittier, more violent tone (it even verges into horror crossover territory in some standout sequences).
    • Wuxia: As the most specific subgenre in this flow, wuxia dials in precise style and narrative requirements. This distinctly Chinese subgenre depicts olden warriors making use of their incredible martial arts skills that verge on the supernatural. Wuxia films include intricate fights with old-fashioned weapons, floaty wirework that sees characters flying through the air and leaping between treetops, and gorgeous visuals that often make use of striking colors and natural locations. Films such as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000, dir. Ang Lee) and “Hero” (2002, dir. Zhang Yimou) epitomize this subgenre.

Another subgenre taxonomy example that begins in the action category could look like: action → shoot ’em up → heroic bloodshed.

• Action: Once again, we begin with action since it’s the parent genre. All subgenres fit within parent genres and/or other subgenres. You cannot have a subgenre that exists outside of all parent genres—that would make it a parent genre itself.
  • Shoot ’em up: These are action movies with an emphasis on guns driving the choreography. This can encompass movies such as “John Wick” (2014, dir. Chad Stahelski) just as easily as “Die Hard” (1988, dir. John McTiernan).
    • Heroic bloodshed: From shoot ’em up movies, we can go one level deeper into the heroic bloodshed subgenre, which was primarily localized to Hong Kong (at least at first) and emerged in the 1980s as a hyper-stylized evolution of the gun-centric action movies that came before it. John Woo’s films, such as “A Better Tomorrow” (1986), “The Killer” (1989), and “Hard Boiled” (1992), define the subgenre. You might also see these films and others like them classified as “bullet ballets” or “bullet operas” instead, since subgenres aren’t official designations that are universally agreed upon.

Let’s look at one more subgenre taxonomy beginning in the action parent genre that goes an extra level down to really see how deep subgenres can drill: action → Western → neo-Western → kimchi Western.

• Action: As always, subgenre classification begins with the parent category.
  • Western: Westerns ruled the film industry for a time and are one of the few distinctly American genres in cinema. It’s worth noting that a Western doesn’t necessarily have to be an action film—movies such as “Meek’s Cutoff” (2010, dir. Kelly Reichardt) or “Dead Man” (1995, dir. Jim Jarmusch) fit better under the drama parent genre while pulling from the Western subgenre for their settings and narratives.
    • Neo-Western: The neo-Western can be a Western-styled film with a more modern setting and perspective than the old school Wild West, such as “No Country for Old Men” (2007, dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen) or “The Way of the Gun” (2000, dir. Christopher McQuarrie). Alternatively, the subgenre can loosely refer to any Western made after the genre’s golden age, such as “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (2007, dir. Andrew Dominik). And, sometimes, the revisionist Western is squeezed between the two as a bridging subgenre.
      • Kimchi Western: The kimchi Western is a hyper-specific subgenre that covers neo-Westerns made in South Korea in particular, such as Kim Jee-woon’s “The Good, the Bad, the Weird” (2008). The name is a riff on the classic spaghetti Western subgenre, which included Westerns made in Italy such as the iconic “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966, dir. Sergio Leone). Other countries offer their own spins, too, such as Japan’s so-called sushi Western “Sukiyaki Western Django” (2007), from director Takashi Miike.

We could keep looking at examples of subgenres all day as they splinter off into seemingly endless categories, even just within the action genre, from buddy cop movies such as “Lethal Weapon” (1987, dir. Richard Donner) to heist films such as “Heat” (1995, dir. Michael Mann) to action-horror hybrids such as “La Horde” (2009, dirs. Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher) and “Train to Busan” (2016, dir. Yeon Sang-ho), which both also slot perfectly into the zombie horror subgenre. Instead, let’s wrap up by examining why subgenres matter.

• Categorizing film: Subgenres allow databases and viewers alike to categorize and classify films.
• Marketing: They can be used in a film’s marketing by advertising directly to fans of specific subgenres. Note that this can also be done deceptively; we’ve all seen misleading trailers that made a film seem like it belongs to a different subgenre than it really does—cough cough “It Comes at Night” (2017, dir. Trey Edward Shults).
• Cohesiveness: Writers and directors can use their understanding of subgenres to help their films feel cohesive. While moving between genres and subgenres can be a great way for a film to keep viewers guessing, having too loose of a grip on the film’s style or switching back and forth too abruptly can give an audience whiplash and hamper the viewing experience.
• Viewer expectations: Creatives can use the history of any given subgenre to their advantage and mine the tropes, cliches, hallmarks, and eccentricities that fans of that particular subgenre expect. You can play into those expectations to make a real crowd-pleaser, or zig where you’re expected to zag to subvert expectations. The aptly named “Shoot ’Em Up” (2007, dir. Michael Davis) is a perfect example of the former, as it lovingly uses all of the tropes and hallmarks of the shoot ’em up subgenre to craft a fun crowd-pleaser. There are many examples of the latter in the slasher subgenre, such as “The Cabin in the Woods” (2011, dir. Drew Goddard) and “You’re Next” (2011, dir. Adam Wingard). Slasher films made after the subgenre’s initial heyday can play off of the tropes and cliches of the entire history of slashers. The meta humor of the “Scream” franchise wouldn’t land nearly as well without the audience having prior knowledge of the slasher subgenre.