One major thing makes all the difference, if you ask me.
Believe in the intelligence of your audience. It allows you to realize not every person alive is on anti-hyper medication, so you can move slowly and deliberately instead of the cut-cut-cut-cut-cut cinematography we see today, completely destroying any hope of creating suspense. It allows you to make movies that require some intelligent processing of the characters and scenes in front of you, creating a movie that'll last past just entertaining you for an hour and a half. You don't suspend belief or scare people by computer CG or clay models - the vampire movies of olden times, where all bites would take place just off-camera proved that. It was scary because it required the audience's imagination to kick into gear.