My point was that the core of D&D and a priority of 5e is that you don't fear the monster and take the flee, freeze, or fawn to the trauma, you fight it bravely with all the tools given.See, this is rather the genre hair splitting I was talking about. There are lots of stories solidly in the horror genre that are a dread of what is coming story. So, it's not like calling some versions of D&D horror is really wrong. But, genre discussions can get pretty lost in the weeds pretty quickly.
What makes CoS different is that Players come in or learn early that they can't beat the vampire for most of the adventure if not all of it without Massive DM assistance. Not fighting him is the gimmick.