Silent Hill did scary better. Resident Evil was more about the adrenaline and anxiety of having to fight off hordes rather than the slower, deep seated horror in games like Silent Hill.
And yet many fans that have been enjoying the series since it started in the late '90s say that the games were never about the action.
Like I said, I'm not a big fan of RE and I honestly don't know much about it even if I have tried really hard to understand them in the past, but in my opinion the only game that got everything right was REmake on GameCube. Every other RE before and after that was either a charming but very flawed game
or a great action game and that doesn't mean either style of games can't have their genuinely scary moments at times. Though like Yoda said "scary" is something totally subjective.