night of the living night: the absence of image and the image of absence

"If we examine the horror genre as a whole, looking at these films as fellow travelers in a single project, trying to discern their “purpose” or “meaning,” what is always there in any horror film worth its salt(ed wounds) is the always-already-terror—the frightening uncertainty and unknowability that undergirds all things. Horror films are horrifying because they are terrifying, because even in their confrontations and impositions they remind us of the limits of our power not only to avoid pain or to survive assault, but to know, to understand, to make meaning. ​"

Here.