Pre-Production: Possible sub-genres for our opening sequence

Personally, I don't really like horror films, as I have said in a previous post. I much prefer thrillers to horror, and I'm really glad that we are able to explore many sub genres within the realm of horror. That got me thinking; what type of thriller films are there? well, you have the typical political thriller, religious thriller, the David Fincher type of psychological thriller, which is the one that i love the most. So why not make a horror/ psychological thriller film?
The American Horror Story title sequence includes excellent examples of aspects of the thriller/psychological horror genre that I would like to adapt to fit my film. For example, my group's basic narrative is that of a girl heavily involved with the church and Christianity, but she is in some sort of demonish mental state where she is constantly being plagued by the idea of the devils, perhaps within the church itself. Okay, so maybe it isn't that basic. The aspects of the american horror story opening sequence that i would like to take but change a little are from the second and third series' opening sequences.
My team and I really liked the idea of the blacked out faces and white eyes shown in 'Coven', and the christian or religion themes seen in 'Asylum'. We thought that we could combine the two, making it as if the blacked out characters are part of the church, perhaps how our main character sees the church and Christianity.
We also had the idea of using a confession box, (keeping the whole theme very church based) which, if using shadow correctly, can seem quite sinister and scary. This can also be liked to the fact that in confession boxes, you can't see the faces of whoever you are confessing to, making the whole thing even more frightening.

The other sub-genre that my group had wanted to explore was the idea of a slasher film. This would have included a group of friends perhaps going to a holiday retreat in the woods, then being killed off. however, I felt that this was way too mainstream and that the idea of a slasher film is very common in modern day horror films, so I wanted to do something different. I also thought that there wasnt enough room for mine and my teammates creativity to show through if we did a slasher film, therefore we decided on doing a religious psychological horror film.
Lauren.