It's not reductive. I watched a long stream of it, and nothing happened that scared me. I was asking if, if that didn't really scare me, if the game pulls any better tricks. I love me some horror games.
What you need to remember is that playing a horror game and watching a horror game are very different.
My encounters with the janitor, the main enemy so far, maybe make up like 5% of my playtime. That's practically nothing. So if someone would see me play, he'd only see me wander through dark hallways with crude visuals, and only very rarely something that is threatening to the player. Of course that wouldn't look scary. But as the janitor's AI and appearance is highly randomized, and because he can pop up and chase you everywhere, he can be extremely terrifying.
That's the beauty of the enemy design in games like this one, Frictional's output or the
Clock Tower franchise: The enemy could be everywhere and therefore in the mind of the player he is everywhere, potentially lurking behind each corner. The result is that although there's only 5% of actual "combat" with this enemy, there is 95% of being worried about it. They're Shrödinger's Enemies; Everywhere and nowhere, so you play in a state of tension and fear.