In a recent discussion on genre in rec.arts.sf.written, someone quoted a post of mine I had written a year or so earlier. Looking at it, I thought it would be interesting enough to share here too.
Horror is a mood, fantasy is a genre.
To explain a bit: horror can be evoked through the mundane (Silence of the Lambs), the science fictional (Who Goes There?) or the fantastic (Dracula).
Horror revolves around evoking a mood of dread, of being scared shitless, a growing sense of unease or discomfort, the sense that something is wrong with the world.
Fantasy revolves around magic in some sense or other, like science fiction revolves around science in some sense or other and mainstream or memitic fiction revolves around “the real world”.
Horror can be evoked in all three of them.