I'll agree with you. Gore on an absurd scale is disturbing..but not truly scary.
Things like Amnesia instill that sort of primal fear that you can't feel in a jump-scare.

Been watching Spoony's videos lately?

Who?

True horror is created by a specific use of lighting, sound and camera angles at the right level, but that requires a lot effort to get right and probably a degree in psychology! So most films just go for someone jumping out of a closet, covered in blood going "abloogy woogy woo!" It's quick, effective; and goes as quickly as it comes, which is why most recent horror films are laughable.

Yeah, agreed. Jump scares are the cheapest scares of all. That and loud noises.

hmms finals day and finding out you forgot to study thats horror XD lol

lol, I guess that counts as well. xD

Good horror to me doesn't rely on Jump scares to get a spook out of you. As the Spoony One said, jump scares are horrors equivalent of the pie in the face; it might work once or twice, but if you rely on it, the whole intention is lost.

One of the reasons Amnesia is so terrifying is the lack of a weapon. You have 0 ability to combat the things in the game, and they will murder you if they find you. That makes it much scarier than other games where you have the ability to shoot the enemy in the face until it is dead.

Amnesia & its spiritual prequel Penumbra: Black Plague are just crazy good horror games because of the above reason.

Yeah, true. Amnesia does it better than Penumbra, even though it also is a great horror game. Though I should say Overture. Once you found out you could kill the dogs, it wasn't nearly as scary anymore. Black Plague made it much better when they took away that feature, and it followed to Amnesia, which is the scariest game ever made, in my opinion.

This is exactly the case. Once I learned I could kill the dogs in Penumbra, I would just sit on boxes and bludgeon them to death, even if it took 5 minutes or so. I wasn't dealing with that shit >:(

I couldn't complete Black Plague. Once the creatures started talking to me I just pulled a "Nope nope nope" and uninstalled the damn thing.

You've seen the new Amnesia being made right? Machine for Pigs? Looking to be just as terrifying as the last one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CagMNLxa9M

As you already said, real good horror doesn't need to be gory as hell. Sure it's cool to look at it, but it's mostly done to freak and gross the audience out, like in Braindead or Evil Dead, where the horror is mixed with black humor.

For me real good horror affects the mind, and screws with your psyche, a surreal trip which gives you sleepless nights because you're haunted by the weird images or the sounds and the music score.

Examples for that could be Blair Witch Project, Insidious, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, Psycho, Event Horizon, Pet Sematary and Shining.

Also flicks which explore the deep, dark abyss of the human soul can be quite scary such as Silence of the Lambs.

Good horror makes you feel unsafe. It makes the unreal real. It reveals things you never wanted to believe were true.