The rise of the pandemic-era cult film

F YOU SUBSCRIBE TO NETFLIX OR ANY OTHER STREAMING service, you know—or you’re at least made to feel—that even if you’re not yet ready to return to theaters, you’ll never run out of things to watch. That should be exciting. So why isn’t it? The unending supply of that thing with the deeply unromantic name is dispiriting: we’ve become a league of prisoners waiting for our rations to be dropped from the sky. Of course, thanks to streaming, we can watch just about anything we want, of any genre or from any era. But what if we’re eager to connect with others who have also just watched the same film we did? From our individual snow-globe worlds, how do we assert our individuality while still feeling part of a film-watching community? How do we affirm