When I was growing up, there were three cult films that dominated midnight screenings at my favourite art/cult/underground cinema: David Lynch's Eraserhead, Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture Show and John Landis' The Blues Brothers. When people talk about Cult Films as a genre, those are the three pics my mind goes to because I remember a time when taking a trip to see these films on the big screen was the best (and only) way to see them. It was always the most fun way to see them this way as well, because of the Frank'n'Furters and Columbias in the Rocky Horror audience or the Jakes and Elwoods at the Blues Brothers. (Thankfully nobody goes to Eraserhead dressed as Henry or the Lady in the Radiator.)

If I'm asked to expand on the cult genre, I think of John Waters' ouevre or Ed Wood's or perhaps B-movies of the 1950s. Or the films that played after the midnight screenings, like Robot Monster or The Terror of Tiny Town (the title of which I rediscovered by googling three words: vampire, dwarf, western). And while John Waters still occasionally directs a film and all of these are considered cult classics, in the DVD age, we as viewers aren't expected to dig deep to find new cult films. We aren't expected to turn up to midnight screenings to see a film we would never see anywhere else. What does a cult film even look like these days?

I was recently asked what my definition of a cult film was, in an attempt to figure out if any more recent films fit with the legacy of these others.

Firstly, I think the film has to be underappreciated in its initial release. Admittedly, I'm not sure if that's true of The Blues Brothers, since that was a product of Saturday Night Live and two well-known comic actors. Perhaps its cult status is reserved for people outside the United States? I grew up in Australia where SNL was only known through cultural osmosis; it has only been regularly screened here on cable television in the last decade, well past its prime in the 1970s and 80s.

Secondly, and I think this is harder to guage, it has to be unconventional in some way - the characters have to be odd or the story has to executed in a way that would make it unpalatable to a large audience. John Waters' films are never going to be ones you can watch with your parents or even some of your closest friends - Pink Flamingos, for exampe. And the Terror of Tiny Town is probably something nobody should ever see!

Third, it should be difficult to find. This, of course, is what separates the early 21st century from the cult cinema of even the late 20th century. It's not hard to film films these days. Not everything is easily available, but it doesn't take a lot of work to get a film if someone recommends it - given online DVD stores or the wonderful world of torrents. On the other hand, this plethora of venues with which to find films of all kinds, means you might have to do a lot of sifting. And DVD culture allows for even more specialised cults, since there is no requirement to fill a cinema with costumed admirers.

In the end, I thought of three films that might well fit these definitions (broadly) but are most definitely a product of a new era in cult films.

Run Lola Run is a German film from 1998, which stars Franke Potente before she became relatively well-known as the love interest in the first two Jason Bourne films. I would consider it difficult to discover, rather than difficult to find - since art and foreign films get better distribution now than ever before, with much better niche cinemas dedicated to screening them. But I think it crossed over out of the art market, once it arrived on DVD. It created a cult simply because its unconventional storytelling found an audience that might never have seen it unless recommended by word of mouth.

Donnie Darko feels less like a cult film now that Jake Gyllenhaal is really, really famous - but it was certainly underappreciated in its cinema release and I remember it as one of the first films that gained a following by people passing illegally downloaded copies around. People seemed to pass it along with recommendations much like those who talked about David Lynch films in the 1980s or 90s - "I love it, but I have no idea what's going on." It's no longer difficult to find, given its Directors Cut re-release and the aforementioned Mr Gyllenhaal, but it remains unconventional in a way most Cult Films are.

Napoleon Dynamite is the most recent film I feel these rules apply to, since even six years after its initial release, it really is an oddball film which people either love or hate. The "Vote for Pedro" t-shirts come as close to dressing up like Frank'n'Furter or Jake Elwood as can be expected from the New Cult movement - which often seeds itself through piracy, since most people are still unwilling to try art or non-mainstream cinemas for their first-run movie fare. And it's certainly as unconventional now as John Waters' films were in the 70s and 80s or Ed Wood's were in the 1950s.

I could bemoan the loss of underground cinemas who boasted midnight screenings of films nobody would see unless a colourful cult following had built up around them, but I'm unlikely to go to a cinema at midnight these days anyway. The New Cult movement has found its way online and torrents are the new underground. But it's getting harder and harder to find concensus on cult classics, since in this new digital age, every film seems to find its niche audience and rarely is any collective agreement required.

What do you think are the cult films of the 2000s? Where do you discover films that were underappreciated during their cinema run? And what happens now that cinema runs are increasingly becoming the appetisers to the main meal of DVD?

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