Whereas the RE series always followed the American horror tradition by making the object of fear an explicit and in your face physical threat to your character, like some giant mutant or maniac with a chainsaw trying to dismember you. Effective when done right, but easily becomes cliched, or in the case of RE 4, one supernatural cannon fodder after another.
I disagree, I think there's alot of psychological horror in play in the RE series (at least prior to RE4, which I have no played through past the village). For me, it's reading people's journals and then realising that you're in the room of the person who wrote it and they must have started the transformation that does it. Then when they spring that zombie out of the closet on you, it really is a shock moment. It's hearing the growling of the dogs in the corridors of the mansion, or finding all of your teammates dead in gruesome ways one after the other. It's not really simply what they show you, it's what they tell you- the guillotine in the courtyard with the fresh bloodstains on it, or the soup you discover in the desserted officer's mess that they deliberately tell you is "still warm, and the loaf of bread is half eaten."
That kind of stuff, combined with the atmosphere is what is truly creepy. Hearing the tragedies of the people in the city through their discarded journals adds a really human element; hearing Jill's monologue at the start of RE3 really gives you a sense of foreboding too- "If only someone had had the courage to make a stand- why didn't someone do something? It's true that once the wheels of justice turn, nothing can stop them. Nothing." (I'm paraphrasing). The connection with the evil Umbrella corporation adds an intellectual horrific element I think. Going around the city in RE3, you are given a sense of it's prosperity and false ambitions in the things you find and see, and the subtle hint is that the city dealt with Umbrella and allowed it to exist there in return for it's economic prosperity, and that in some cases people just didn't see the sinister nature of what they were dealing with because they didn't
want to. It that sense, the terrible virus unleashed on the city is a creepy and merciless kind of divine justice. Human greed and our complacency in modern society is a scary theme in it's own right, and it's played upon here and woven into a scary shock-horror story and environment. Even the decor and the puzzles are scary, almost as if the phrases and images take on new meaning like they're foreshadowing the sinister future. All the phrases about the past and the future on statues, goddess and imperial imagery (the arrogance of the officials' tastes, perhaps?), a gallery showing paintings of every stage of human life, leading up to old age and death, it all messes with your head and adds to the creepy message and feeling being conveyed.
And to state the more obvious, immediate horror elements in the games; yes, those zombies suddenly busting out of a quiet alleyway (they lulled you into a false sense of security!), or Nemesis' voice growling "STARS" at you just before he appears, the music and all of that are scary too. But the direction is very good, too- those camera angles are picked very intelligently, for maximum effect and claustrophobia. It sort of annoyed me that the films lacked that same intelligence, because in the games it's a large part of what makes in scary- they literally try to frame the picture on screen in the creepiest way possible, yet not so over the top that it's ridiculous or abnormal. Oh, and hearing moaning zombies that you can't see and that still don't come and attack you yet for some reason, but that you
know will at some point in the game is also scary!
Okay, I've said my piece in Resi's defense, lol.