Twilight Zone/Thorn is actually peak horror design.
Darkside and Twilight Zone are more explicitly linked as opposites and references to Tales From the Darkside and - obviously - The Twilight Zone. ...In Japan. In North America, they felt the Zone reference toed the legal line a bit too much and used the "Thorn" localization.
The series clearly has a great amount of surrealist imagery and inspiration to it, but the horror roots are there, too, though they never return nearly as overtly or as jarringly as in the Roxas prologue of II and the general low-key presence and uncanniness of the "lesser" Nobody enemies.
(Ever notice that Saix's Berzerkers seem to actually be the hammer with the humanoid shape "wielding" it being more like some kind of vestigial appendage along for the ride? Sometimes the hammer forcibly shrinks its "wielder" just to get it out of the way for the moment or because it's...trying to interpret the animation data of an analog clock?)
(Tangential, but Roxas is associated with the Samurai Nobodies and has some measure of dominion over them, maybe even being based directly on him and coming into being at the same time he did, so... What's that about? The "ecosystem" of "Lesser Nobodies" is a giant mystery still after all this time. "Creepers" are lower in rank than "Dusks" and they're the only two "general-purpose" Nobodies not associated with any specific character. Dusks are implied to be the only Nobodys besides outright Organization-level humanoids capable of speech. Presumably there were underling types associated with Vexen, Zexion and Lexaeus as well that the audience just never comes across, implying that they collectively ceased to exist once their "patron" did?)
Themes shift to more existential ambiguity and Fridge Horror than the explicit or hostilely surreal and clearly-threatening-but-functionally-inexplicable.
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