It's not about the "horror", it's about dread.

[kryptonitemonkey]

I've been reading peoples' reactions to The Village, and the ones who don't seem to like it all have the same thing to say. It's all a bunch of bitching and whining about it not being scary or horrifying. They all seem to miss the part of scary that M. Knight is most excellent at creating. And that feeling is dread. I'm reminded of something Orson Scott Card said when describing the various types of scary that exist in writing and in movies. If a monster is involved, until you see it, you're going to be scared because the imagination takes over. Once the monster actually appears, then one is relieved and can honestly say they were always expecting something a little worse. That is anticipation. And there is horror and several other things, but the most intriguing is that of dread.

As he put it, dread is that feeling one gets when returning home to find the window open when you know you shut it and are the only one who has been home. The thing is, that is the scary that M Knight does, and that which people who are looking for a conventional thriller don't seem to get. His movies are always completely drenched in dread. I can still watch movies like Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense and feel the dread, even knowing the twists. It's a kind of scary that doesn't matter over foreknowledge or even something really bad to occur. It's something I usually notice, and quite enjoy, so it rather annoys me when people say that it wasn't scary at all.