The Witch's woodland farmhouse setting also counted as one of many backdrops of dread, pinning in the year's unluckiest of movie heroes: the quiet, empty spaces of a Manhattan mansion, where the young caretaker of Mickey Keating's Repulsion homage Darling comes violently unglued; the London haunted house of James Wan's bigger, sillier The Conjuring 2, a spring - loaded funhouse ride of a movie; and the claustrophobic
underground bunker of 10 Cloverfield Lane, which proved less a sequel to its blockbuster «cousin»
than a feature -
length Twilight Zone episode.