Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
I have to quibble about the Horror definition, there. Horror doesn't always have to have monstrous protagonists, or even protagonists who combat "darker impulses." It just depends on the protagonists being in a "avoid the overwhelmingly dangerous threat" mode more than a "combat with the expectation of possible victory" mode.
Well, there are really two definitions of horror. There's the horror of the external monster, and the horror of the internal monster.

The horror of the external monster tends only to work when the external monster is so beyond what you can face. Either because of atmospheric elements, which can't be fought, or in terms of raw power that dwarfs that of the protagonists. The line between that and fantasy is a fine one, the key distinction being a certain sense of futility or powerlessness.

The horror of the internal monster, though, is the one that has been a cornerstone of horror as a genre. The horror of the mind. Madness. Rage. Fear. The fact that what the cosmos can do to us is nothing compared to what we can do to ourselves. Even atmospheric horror contains traces of this, inasmuch as we are essentially terrifying ourselves by coming up with horrific explanations for what could otherwise be simply unnerving coincidence. This kind of horror is fairly distinct from fantasy, which tends to deal with larger-than-life heroes overcoming larger-than-life obstacles, or dark fantasy, featuring grey-morality heroes overcoming their darker tendencies while analogously overcoming their darker-than-grey enemies. In this genre, the focus isn't really external at all, but internal.

Perhaps a better definition of horror, then, is "Nobody can stop the monsters."