I thought The Others was excellent. The buildup, the tension. This is true horror. [img]graemlins/gore.gif[/img] is not horror - it's simply gore. Now, some gore-based films also have horror: the first Nightmare on Elm Street is a good example.
But, most of the group-of-teenagers-alone-in-woods-with-sex-and-gore movies just don't do it for me. Except for humor, of course, like in Friday the 13th Pt. 7 where Jason kills these kids in a sleeping bag by picking the bag up and slamming it into a tree Babe Ruth style.
True horror is about internal realization. In The Others, I only realized the "truth" at the end about 2 mins. before the character did. It all fell together so perfectly, so horribly. It was a great flick among great flicks.
I've made a note to see Mothman now that I've read this thread.
Frailty ROCKS!!!!! Great horror. See it.
So, yeah, I like the old style. True gothic. Stoker's Dracula, Shelley's Frankenstein. Frankenstein, for instance, is more about the monster's internal struggle and realizations, as juxtaposed with those of the creator, than it is anything else. It is the horrible dichotomy of human existence, made vivid symbol in the ice and snow scenes (ice looks light and warm yet is truly cold and dark), that contains the horror of Frankenstein.
"Just like Mary Shelley. Just like Frankenstein. Break your chains, make the change, and try to walk that line." Grateful Dead: Rambling Rose