No disrespect to my current coworkers—they're smart, generous people, and pun-tolerant to a fault—but the best job I ever had was at a slightly-above-average suburban video store in the mid-'90s. There were hundreds, probably thousands, of these kinds of mom-and-pop operations back then, and in the post-*Clerks *era, a few were even being mythologized as cool-kid flophouses—the kind of place where the next Tarantino or Kevin Smith would argue about Godard behind the counter before handing you the latest of installment of *The *Decalogue.

Such a highfalutin' scene was never going to materialize at my store, where a lot of our revenue came from sad sales of rare Beanie Babies, and where the highest-renting "foreign" film was *The Lover, *a softcore yawner favored by many a late-night dad. But the store did offer two employee perks: 1) unlimited free rentals; and 2) an unparalleled selection of spectacularly shitty Reagan/Bush-era pop-junk.

These were the movies that had sat unloved on the decade-old shelves for years, and yet *still *couldn't get kicked to the used bin: The Stuff and The Stepfather; C.H.U.D. and Chopping Mall; 52 Pick-Up and Warrior of the Lost World. Schlock space epics, imbecilic slashers, body-hurling action films, torrid thrillers—I'd leave work with two to three videos a night, usually finishing them off before the next day's shift.

It was a wonderful, disgusting existence, and eventually, I learned there was a slightly grown-up name for all the crud I was accruing: These were genre movies, and to refer to them otherwise—especially in the street-cred-conscious '90s—meant risking looking like a total C.H.U.D. yourself. "Horror"? That was a term for black-shirted gas-pumpers who did conventions in North Jersey. "Sci-fi"? To be taken seriously only in the context of "smart sci-fi," that self-defeatingly snooty flourish.

Using the catch-all "genre" was an attempt to telegraph respectability—to make sure everyone knew that your affection toward *Halloween III: Season of the Witch *or *Under Siege 2 *was at least *somewhat *semi-knowing. But over the years, as genre movies became more respectable, the word itself started to feel more like a dodge than a descriptor. It was a way to embrace something seemingly not good for you, while also keeping it at a safe, respectable distance—like referring to sleazy serial-killer paperbacks as "vintage pulp," or to ska-punk as "music."

And this year, "genre" feels more vague and awkward than ever, given that the top three films at the current box office could earn that tag: Kong: Skull Island, for all its award-nabbing A-list stars, is a monster movie teeming with oversize gorillas, spiders, and at least one unfortunate cephalopod; *Logan *is essentially a bloody, broody Wolvy-on-the-lam chase flick with a high-plains-snikter vibe; and *Get Out *is a tightly constructed social satire that doubles as a creepy psych-thriller. They're joined in the year-to-date top ten by two equally B-dazzled recent box office hits: The corpse-collecting action-epic *John Wick: Chapter 2, *and M. Night Shyamalan's highbrow-grindhouse flick *Split. *Take away any of these films' recognizable stars, and strip their budgets down to a six-figure sum, and they'd feel right at home among those dusty, scuzzy VHS classics I once plowed through every night. In 2017, "genre" is no longer a niche, and nearly *every *movie feels like a midnight movie—albeit the kind you no longer need need to stay up all evening to enjoy.

Fast, (Kinda) Cheap, and Totally In Control

One major reason why horror, action, and thrillers are likely so prevalent well this year is disappointingly twist-free: They're very, very cheap. Studio budget estimates are about as reliable as cabinet-member tax returns—especially when you factor in marketing and advertising—but with the exception of *Kong *(which cost around $185 million) and *Logan *(just under $100 million), this year's hits have been remarkably reined-in. The self-financed Split, which is Shyamalan's second film in a row with lowercase-c conservative production company Blumhouse, reportedly cost the writer-director less than $10 million. *Get Out *(also made with Blumhouse) was kept under $5 million, while John Wick: Chapter 2 was around $40 million—not quite a bargain, but still cheaper than *Jason Bourne, *London Has Fallen, or either of the *Jack Reacher *films. Now that big-studio franchise-film costs regularly approach the $200 million mark, these kinds of minimal-risk outlays—with budgets that are big enough to draw talent, yet small enough not to risk an end-of-year write-down if things go awry—no doubt look better than ever.

And those scaled-down costs appear to be liberating for filmmakers, as well. If *Logan *had cost $180 million, it would have looked and felt like, well, another $180 million superhero story: colossal, planet-pummeling stakes; quadrant-satisfying big cast; multiverse-feeding cameos. Instead, it's a gory, hard-R, often depressing road-trip tale featuring two aging, unhappy men and a mute young girl, and highlighted by a remarkable mid-movie sequence, set in a hotel-casino, that ignores chop-speed CGI-flash, and instead literally slows...our hero...down to a near-crawl (I don't want to say much more about that scene, probably my favorite in a comic-book movie in years; what happens in Oklahoma City stays in Oklahoma City). No one would ever confuse *Logan *with, say, Sideways—it hits the necessary vengeance-is-mine beats the base demands—but the movie operates at a lower volume than nearly every other Marvel film, and feels comfortable doing so.

These kinds of minimal-risk outlays—budgets that are big enough to draw talent, yet small enough not to risk a write-down if things go awry—look better than ever.

There's even more superheroic stuff going on in Get Out, Jordan Peele's dense goodie bag of astringent social commentary, jump-scare comedy, and sheer sunken-place tension. On the Internet, the movie achieved instant-classic categorization within just a few days, inspiring fan art, memes, and a lot of oh-hey-didja-notice-that recaps. That's largely due to Peele's deftly calibrated storytelling and precise clue-spilling, not to mention Get Out's barely-under-the-surface, deeply resonant ideas about race relations in 21st-century America. They're all wrapped up in a movie that's faithful to the conventions and pleasures of classic horror and psychological thrillers of the past, from *Night of the Living Dead *to to Misery to pretty much anything Wes Craven did in the '90s. Had *Get Out *been attempted as a straight-up comedy or drama, a lot of Peele's steelier ideas would have had to been sanded down so as to not seem abrupt or arrhythmic. But genre movies have a flexibility that encourages futzing around: The scary-movie beats may be well-established—you've got to have those betrayals and comeuppances and grand-plan reveals—but a savvy filmmaker can use that structure as a way to sneak in bigger, more adventurous ideas.

*Get Out *is also a remarkably fun movie to watch in the theater—especially in its final, *oh-shit *moments, which prompted one of the most happily cathartic audience reactions I can remember. The same can be said for much of Split, a fantastically composed, occasionally too-grody-for-its-own-good kidnapping flick that ends with a reveal that you'll find either unbelievable or unforgivable, depending on how you feel about all things Shyamalan. And there are moments in *Kong: Skull Island *that sire the communal dumb-fun joy found in every great monster movie of the past, from *Them! *to *Q *to Starship Troopers. While the human characters are little more than highly poseable edibles, it's hard to tut-tut too much at a movie in which a soldiers take on a stabby-legged arachnid, and in which a massive gorilla eviscerates a giant octopus (apologies to anyone who either hasn't seen the film yet, or who was friends with that octopus).

Ultimately, that kind of giddy, gotta-see-it immediacy may be why all of these movies—not to mention these various genres of "genre"—have succeeded this winter: Sandwiched between the beautiful downers of the late-fall awards-season, and the overcrowded summer-tentpole behemoths, movies like Get Out, Split, *Logan, *and *Kong *feel like odd little surprises—the kinds of films best enjoyed as soon as possible, and while surrounded by as many people as you can find, before their secrets are revealed for you. Their successes might be no more than a strange, serendipitous blip, but for someone whose B-movie affection has never been much of a secret, I'd be happy if this particular season of the witch carries on through the rest of the year.