I'm glad to see someone asked the question and I'm really interested to see what people suggest, because much like you (@
landpirate) I've kinda sorta lost faith in the genre of horror films. They're just not scary, are always predictable, have the same plot elements, and same character development.
Maybe I'm just old and jaded and desensitized from seeing almost everything under the sun, but I've not been actually scared by a movie in... well more years than I care to count. The new evil dead was alright but it was ultra predictable and more gory than anything, and definitely won't give most people with any reasonable amount of fortitude nightmares.
Aside from that, everything that comes to mind is pretty much the same horror flick:
Scream
Texas Chainsaw
Nightmare on elm st
The hills have eyes
Hostel
Saw
Friday the 13th
Halloween
etc...