Hypothetical - Multiplayer Horror

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- Immersion ruined by friends making jokes or their fear reactions being hilarious.

Hm... maybe it could work as a game that requires you to do active roleplaying in order to work. Of course that would limit the market to the few players willing to do that - but why try and force immersion unto someone who prefers to make jokes with his friend anyway?

Maybe some of you remember the game Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption - the mostly unknown predecessor to the a bit more famous (but still underrated) Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.
If I remember correctly, that game had a multiplayer modus that was very close to the classic pen & paper game it was based on: The players had to make up their own quests and storylines and roleplay accordingly. (I think one player could even take the role of an invisible Dungeon Master and tell the story, give quests, talk for NPCs, spawn enemies and so on.)
In short, the game world was pretty much just the scenery you played in, everything else had to come from the players themselves.

Not sure if one could use this system for horror at all... I mean there are probably very few people who'd be willing to immerse themselves to such a degree and not everyone likes to roleplay. And if you let one person set up the horror experience for others, he'd probably just be a dick and spam jumpscares But it could be an interesting experiment.