If we want to get technical, just about every single game can be an "action" game. It's a very broad genre with many subgenres, one of which happens to be survival horror. But that doesn't suddenly mean the original survival horror games are somehow "action" games or action horror just because you kill enemies, can obtain powerful weapons, or end up with lots of health and ammo by the end.
None of that diminishes the fact that they're survival horror games. It's easy to look back and dissect the games as we know them now as seasoned Resident Evil gamers and say "well you CAN kill every enemy and still have lots of health and ammo" even though that isn't what most people's experience is with any of these games the first or even 2nd time. Yes, you CAN master these games. They're designed with that arcadey speed running philosophy. But you have to earn it first.
Resident Evil is literally a giant puzzle you must solve with action being a secondary objective. Action is not the purpose of the game. Survival is, and there's a very stark contrast to how this was achieved then with the original 3 games than how it was during the RE4 era and even today.
Action is more of a priority than it has ever been and so is hand holding. This is even true of the Dead Space series that is a literal Resident Evil 4 clone that like Resident Evil 4, dumbs down exploration into just scavenging for items, meanwhile you can just press a button that literally guides you to your destination just in case the game wasn't linear enough. And just like Resident Evil 4, you are also given multiple mechanics that ensure you never run out of ammo or even feel weak. You can buy resources in case you were terrible at managing the ones lying around literally everywhere. You can upgrade your equipment and character like an RPG to reduce your vulnerability and make you stronger against enemies. And if that wasn't enough, you can cheese your way through the game with actual mechanics. Whether it's meleeing and knifing in Resident Evil or using stasis and telekinesis in Dead Space.
These are horror games by atmosphere, but literally everything about them is no different than games like Metroid, Tomb Raider, or Batman. These aren't survival horror games nor do they have much in common with the classic Resident Evil games despite maybe sometimes using a rocket launcher at the end of the game...
Now the modern Resident Evil games are doing a much better job maintaining their survival horror identity and even seems to be influencing the Dead Space remake for the better. But as we can see from Village and even RE3, action is still a priority for Capcom and to their credit, I think they've found a great balance. But that's speaking strictly of their ability and the actual gameplay present in the games. But in typical Capcom fashion, they've dropped the ball and fell right back into their hand holdy philosophy that started with RE4. In RE3, they completely dumbed down Nemesis either to make the game more manageable to newcomers or because they literally cheaped up and rushed the game out. But after Village, I don't doubt it could have been a response to how intimidating people found Mr. X in RE2.
The worst part is, Village actually has all the right tools to be an excellent survival horror game, except they wanted to make it easier for players by dumbing down the entire item management process, giving you virtually unlimited storage. They brought back the merchant for players to fall back on. They added health regen so you never really need to use health items. Melee is once again an exploitable mechanic and they've abused the crafting system. They took a perfectly fine survival horror game and neutered it to feel like less of a survival horror game and more like an action adventure game, putting us back to where we were with RE4...