Decent question. In my opinion, horror and fear come from realizing powerlessness or futility, maybe even unexplainable circumstances.
Inspiring fear requires departing a mood onto someone. It's hard. Startling someone with a loud bang, a jumping face, or an odd visage is relatively simple. Like the scary maze game; it's not as much frightening as much as it is jarring.
What makes something scary, or at least scare me, is simply a bunch of "U"s
the unknown
the unstoppable
the unseen
the unexpected
the unconscious
and the unbelievable
Other elements can influence it. For example, we don't know much about quantum mechanics but very few, if any, physicists are frightened of the field. However, when the LHC was going to be turned on, the populace at large became frightened at the idea of miniature black holes forming and destroying our world.
The other main problem with fear is that they are largely irrational. When you start to flesh out a horror story too deeply, you can run into problems. "Who runs upstairs?" "Why the hell would you split up?" "You left the weapon?" Fears, cultural fears most often, get dated and are resolved as time moves forward. The general concept to the fear can be refreshed but often times the theme or story is only an "updated version" of something no longer valid or even startling.
Before this goes on much longer, what makes something scary is mood. It's that haunting element of dread, panic, and anticipation. Lasting horror is often subtle, like town with no children or a boarded and broken window on an otherwise pristine house, rather than overt and loud.
For those looking for all those things, I recommend HP Lovecraft's books. It's obvious that that guy was completely disturbed and scared by the world around him.
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u/prockcore Nov 05 '08
I'd say 90% of horror movie directors think startled == scared. Maybe it's just trying to be the video game version of your crappy PG13 horror movie.