For it to be clichéd it would have to have been done over and over again (I can't remember it happening once in anything, unless I've crossed universes again).

As for it having horror movie overtones, there is this pale faced guy in a black hood with weird eyes shooting lighting out of his finger tips (clichéd perhaps but already in the story and possibly impossible to change in a radical way) at the hero of this trilogy. While his father (a clichéd dark knight with a skull mask) looks on.

The scene has already got (for good reason) horror movie overtones (as do many similar film series like Harry Potter especially at points in the story like this).

Flashbacks have never appeared in a Star Wars movie, it's against the idiom of the series, but the Force Ghosts already do exist and we are told that they are more powerful than Vader can possibly imagine, so it's consistent with what we know and to have the Emperor appear to defeat them with ease potentially adds to the supposed hopelessness of Luke's situation.