The posts in the other thread where people type "yeah back to horror roots at last!" make my head hurt.
I've always considered RE an action series with a horror backdrop.
it's always been very much in line with a terminator 1, 'alien' or predator over stuff like exorcist, poltergeist or halloween but the marketing focus on the horror part of it is the attraction so ultimately folks took that as their deal, especially people who haven't really played the originals in quite some time (or at all)- it's just their own marketing dictating the image of the series over the content of the games themselves