Horror literature/movies

[MR. Macabre 666]

Most horror movies are formulaic, thus you have haunted house movies, ghosts, monster chasing, zombies, and a few others.

And since I am past the age of being scared by horror movies, I watch them rather as expressions of ideas. For example, I recently enjoyed a horror movie "Immaculate" although it was rather formulaic, it explored interesting ideas of unwanted pregnancy and forced birth.

Consequently, movies that scared me the most were not horror movies. Like, I watched the movie "Roswell" (1994) when I was a kid and it scared the shit out of me because I fell for bad logic and the trope that it was "real".

And it seems that for the most people the "real" factor is the thing that scares them the most, and thus a lot of horror movies claim to be based on real events - although they are not.

That's why these days if I want to scare myself, I watch documentaries and go "That's what they're putting in food!!" or "These people are so close to getting power!!"

If you want to see something different in the horror genre, you should watch the films HEREDITARY, MIDSOMMAR, and THE WITCH. 
Probably 3 of the very best films on my all-time list.