A subgenre is a narrower category within a broader genre. It keeps the core DNA of the main genre, but adds a specific set of conventions, themes, or settings that make it feel more precise. If “horror” is the umbrella, subgenres are the branches: slasher, supernatural, psychological, found footage, and so on. The same goes for other genres. “Science fiction” can split into space opera, cyberpunk, time travel, or dystopian sci-fi, each with its own familiar ingredients and expectations.
Examples make the idea click quickly. A slasher typically focuses on a human killer, a rising body count, and set-piece scares, while folk horror often draws on rural isolation, ritual, and community paranoia. In action films, a “one-man army” subgenre leans on a lone hero taking on overwhelming odds, while a “heist” subgenre centers on planning, teamwork, and complications during the job. Subgenres are useful because they describe what kind of story you are really getting, even when two movies share the same broad genre label.
