 According to academic Brigid Cherry , nostalgia " is a strong element of certain kinds of cult appeal . " When Veoh added many cult films to their site , they cited nostalgia as a factor for their popularity . Academic I. Q. Hunter describes cult films as " New Hollywood in extremis " and a form of nostalgia for that period . Ernest Mathijs instead states that cult films use nostalgia as a form of resistance against progress and capitalistic ideas of a time @-@ based economy . By virtue of the time travel plot , Back to the Future permits nostalgia for both the 1950s and 1980s . Many members of its nostalgic cult following are too young to have been alive during those periods , which Emma Pett interprets as fondness for retro aesthetics , nostalgia for when they saw the film rather than when it was released , and looking to the past to find a better time period . Similarly , films directed by John Hughes have taken hold in midnight movie venues , trading off of nostalgia for the 1980s and an ironic appreciation for their optimism . Mathijs and Sexton describe Grease ( 1978 ) as a film nostalgic about an imagined past that has acquired a nostalgic cult following . Other cult films , such as Streets of Fire ( 1984 ) , create a new fictional world based on nostalgic views of the past . Cult films may also subvert nostalgia , such as The Big Lebowski , which introduces many nostalgic elements and then reveals them as fake and hollow . Author China Miéville praises the use of satire in Donnie Darko for its avoidance of falling into facile and comforting nostalgia , but Nathan Lee of the New York Sun identifies the retro aesthetic and nostalgic pastiche as factors in its popularity among midnight movie crowds . 
