Formula in Horror Books - good or bad?

I am a great fan of the horror novel - not films, novels. Films have gotten to where they rely upon the blood and gore, leaving nothing to the imagination. However, a well written horror story can awaken you deepest, darkest fears, allow you to color the bad guy with a familiar face or one from your worst nightmares, giving you the scare of your life.

Steven King has often said in interviews that he writes about the things that scare him the most. And he manages it in a way that it becomes scary to us as well. But when does the horror novel stop being a good scare, a good thrill and start to become the same old thing?

With the glut of vampire, werewolf, and vampwolf stories on the market, sometimes it becaomes an onerous task to find a new good author or good book to read, and many authors fall into the pit of despair called the formulaic novel. We've seen it the most with romance novels- they meet and fall in love by page 25, sex by page 100, drama that threatens to separate them, and by the end of the book, true love promounced and all is well. Sadly, many horror writers do the same thing. The book starts out great; you have the foreboding, the sense that something is not quite right in this perfect world, but then suddenly that pit opens and without reading the rest of the book, you can already tell who is going to die, how many are going to die, and who will survive and make everything right. For some, a formula can be a comforting thing - they know what to expect when they pick up their favorite author and they love that author, and still get the chills and thrills that the rest of us are no longer seeing in that body or work.

The big question is - can this pit be avoided? Some of the best and most prolific authors fall into this at some point - Steven King has, Anne Rice, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little. Robin Cook. What drives the author to the edge of the pit and sometimes into it (besides the financial side?) How do we keep horror fresh and new, or have we become too jaded as a society that only horrific amounts of blood and mutilation can truly give us a good scare anymore?

These are questions I cannot answer, but perhaps some of you can. I say it's time to get back to a good, old fashioned, can't go out in the dark type of horror novel. Who's with me?