H......aargh.

Hi Fedias - some really cracking ideas.
Spooked me just reading it.
I still think you can have a series of creepy random events within a narrative structure.
Good examples that come mind. The latest Alice in Wonderland film, where Alice is falling down the rabbit hole. You know she is falling, and you know eventually she is going to hit the bottom, but on the way down in a sequence that seems to go on for ever, all sorts of nasty things come out and grab her, and are scary. I remember a movie called Poltergeist, similar sort of experience by a girl being dragged to the afterlife by the ghouls.
As soon as you step through a door or cross a barrier or run a frame the narrative automatically begins and once you have started you need an end. Alice hits the floor, is the end of that sequence. Everything needs a beginning a middle and an end.
If you just show a random series of creepy images and sounds, to my mind, it will just become incoherent. If people don't know whats going on, how will they be spooked. I don't think it will frighten the audience, I just think it will make them confused.
To be scared you have to have a level of expectation. Even if the narrative is only that the level of horror is gradually increasing as you move further into the film.
Your right the scariest bit might be a blank screen. But the important bit is what comes before and after the blank screen. The narrative builds the tension, paces the action. Think Hitchcock - The Birds - Psycho.
d2s.