If you liked The Shining, Carrie and Rosemary's Baby, I'm just fine with your taste in horror as those were all EXCELLENT movies.
As to what makes a "good horror film," mainly a couple of things and they're probably not things you would expect. To be good the movie has to scare you, to be great it has to crawl under your skin and stay there for a few days and question your entire existence. Rosemary's Baby had me wondering if anyone was plotting against me, The Shining had me wondering if there were any people in my life that weren't actually there, Carrie had me being especially nice to ugly people for awhile. Great horror films make you scared, not merely "starteled." There are exceptions though, some of the Genres merely have to get your blood pumping in a horrifying way. Like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, the slasher genre.
It should be noted that to acheive these things the you should note that the movie DOES NOT require a big budget or even great acting, it needs to be merely believable. Yes, the neighbors COULD be involved in some sort of plot against me, the Apartment Complex I live in COULD be haunted, there COULD be a masked psychopath hiding in my closet. In the light of day these things are probably impossible and even more highly improbably, but at night they COULD ALL BE TRUE! Where horror movies go wrong is when they don't SEEM believable, or even seem very unlikely. Yes this is silly, The Shining isn't anymore "believable" than Drag Me to Hell, but somehow the writers and director were able to make them seem more believable.
I've actually done some independant study of this on my own and what I've figured out is the best horror movies typically revolve around the unknown and reflect the attacking of innocence in someway, and/or dealing with something that is completly uncontrollable. For instance any slasher ever has a killer who starts out with an unknown identity and/or unknown face. We watch as all the "bad people" who are into sex, drugs, rock and roll (there's usually at least one that we the individual identify with) get slaughtered while the prissy do-gooder manages to get away in the end. It scares us because as human beings we know that we will never be that prissy do-gooder, and because as humans we fear the unknown. The killers are also unkillable/uncontrollable which is a reflection of our fear of not having any control over our own lives. Good horror reflects the things that scare us the most in real life, even if those things are abstract, like not controlling your environment. Bad horror represents these things in unbelievable/unrealistic ways. Because of this, horror is HIGHLY subjective. But what I've just described reflects what I've found for the most liked horror movies out there.
Oh, and one othe thing. Good horror flicks make you care about the characters. Bad horror has unbelievable characters that we can't identify with or it never takes the time to establish those characters. This is USUALLY the problem when a horror film goes bad. The characters. Horror is VERY LARGELY character driven.
By the way, I am right behind you.
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