I have a problem with most horror stories, movies, novels, what have you. I'm wondering if I'm the only one. The problem is this: most movies that you might think of, at first glance, as a "horror"movie, simply aren't of that genre. Most are thrillers, or, if you're lucky, thrillers with horror elements.

Let me tell you where I'm coming from with this. When I first saw 28 Days Later, I found myself feeling horror for the first time in the cinema in a long while. Specifically, I'm thinking of the brief shot of the community message board that this structure had turned into, where people were leaving things like "Have you seen my daughter?" and "I'm infected, I'm so sorry…" and so forth. The entire thing was covered with these messages, and you only got the briefest of shots, but it was enough to let you know that the situation was truly horrific. That was a testament to the lives, in that film, that had been devastated by the outbreak. Horrifying.

When dude goes to seek out his parents and what he finds…that's horror.

That, and other moments within that film, reminded me what it was to get horrified at a horror movie. I realized that what I'd been mistaking for true horror was simply terror. Horror movies should horrify, thrillers thrill and terrify. There's a subtle difference.

Let's get down to brass tacks for a minute. I looked up "horrify" and got "To cause feelings of horror." Great, thanks. But for horror, I got this:

• An intense, painful feeling of repugnance and fear.
• Intense dislike; abhorrence.

Painful repugnance. Abhorrence. That works. Now, if I watch a Friday the 13th flick, I really don't feel that. Why? Because most slasher flicks are simply thrillers. There's seldom anything horrific–at least in a movie–about people being stalked and killed one at a time. But compare the feelings you get from watching a slasher flick to the feeling of watching John Hurt "hatch" in the middle of Alien. I can't imagine anybody who didn't twist and turn when they watched that scene unfold.

You can even make the comparison inside a movie–let's take the recent House of Wax remake as an example. The movie was better than it had any right to be, frankly. And it had a lunatic final sequence which deserved a better film to be stitched on. But there's three things here.

First, I don't count what are essentially torture sequences as horror. The heroine having to rip her lips open after they've been super glued together or losing part of a finger–to me, that's just the gross-out. Anybody can go for that. Sure, if you want to be technical, that's horrific. But there's nothing artful about that.

But second, there are some truly horrific moments in the film. When dude smacks at the wax "dummy" of his friend and knocks part of the skin away, only to reveal the jaw underneath–when you think about being paralyzed, encased in wax, and you're still alive–that's messed up. That's horror, folks.

However, most of the rest of the film is just "being chased by/avoiding the bad guys," which is just straight-up thriller stuff. The new spin on the serial killer is that they're brothers and one's disfigured. Whoopee.

And that's the problem: a cheap "boo" has taken the place of real horror. A cat jumping out at the right moment is not horror, nor is the "turn around and be shocked by somebody standing there" schtick.

We need more moments of horror in fiction and film. And it's hard to do. I was thinking Something Else #51 would be horrific in nature, though it wound up simply sad. Something Else #50 is probably the closest thing to what I'm talking about I was able to pull off–the idea that such a terrible ritual could be compared to the Christian ideal of communion I would think would be fairly horrific to any self-aware Christian.

I honestly haven't written too many pure horror stories. Dark fantasy is where most of them fall, which I think is a convenient bucket for anything that simply doesn't want to be taken that far. For that matter, I honestly don't go into writing aiming for a genre of any sort…the things just sort of happen like they want to.

Anybody else feel like this? Or should the shmoe shut up and sit down?