The Woman in the Yard Doesn’t Know What To Do With All Its Grief
Danielle Deadwyler struggles to save Jaume Collet-Serra’s well-crafted but emotionally misguided horror movie.
Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) hasn’t been herself lately. Ever since the car accident, which slayed her husband and shattered her leg, she’s barely spoken to her two children, Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and Annie (Estella Kahiha), instead wallowing in her grief and endlessly rewatching the last video she took of her and her husband. But she’s finally forced out of bed when Taylor curtly informs her that the power in their fixer-upper farmhouse — which had been her husband’s dream project — has gone out. Unable to charge her phone, Ramona and her kids are left to helplessly wait until the power comes back on. But as they while away the day, eating leftovers and ice cream from their fast-warming fridge, Taylor spots a strange, veiled woman sitting in their yard.
When Ramona ventures out to speak to the woman (Okwui Okpokwasili), she gets only cryptic answers in a strained, raspy voice, which informs her: “Today’s the day.” Disturbed, Ramona hurries back inside and orders her children to stay indoors. But as the day grows longer and the shadows loom larger, even staying inside does not keep them safe from the woman in the yard.
It’s a pretty intriguing start for Jaume Collet-Serra’s chilling new horror film, which begins as one-half ghost story and one-half haunted-house thriller. And Collet-Serra, ever the consummate horror filmmaker (and clearly overjoyed to be back in the genre for the first time in 16 years), mines a few genuine thrills out of the initially sparse scares. But as the story unfolds, Sam Stefanak’s script reveals itself to be a jumbled mess of half-baked ideas and heavyhanded “grief as horror” metaphors. It all culminates in a final act so emotionally misguided that it’s almost galling.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with hitting the grief metaphor so hard, nor with the “trauma horror” genre in general, which The Woman in the Yard is firmly part of. But The Woman in the Yard seems keenly aware that it only has enough plot for a mildly interesting short story, which means that Stefanak’s script piles on several twists and narrative detours — including a baffling mirror-dimension twist — that confuses its final emotional beats.
Danielle Deadwyler handily carries the film, but it’s not enough.
It’s a shame since Collet-Serra delivers such a well-crafted horror movie, and star Danielle Deadwyler gives such a fierce central performance. After their first collaboration in Collet-Serra’s 2024 action flick Carry-On, Collet-Serra wisely gives Deadwyler her own star vehicle and shapes almost the entire movie around her impossibly expressive face. As Ramona starts to unravel from the pressure of the mysterious veiled woman — who slowly moves closer and closer to the house as the day drags on — Deadwyler’s eyes become wider and more crazed; Collet-Serra frequently will fill the frame up with just Deadwyler’s haunted visage, the whites of her eyes popping so much they seem like they’re their own 3D effect.
Collet-Serra, in turn, does his best to embed the audience in Ramona’s unraveling headspace. She’s haunted by the night of the car crash, and Collet-Serra makes this memory visceral, frequently showing Ramona showered by flying glass, as her past bleeds into her present. But despite both Deadwyler and Collet-Serra’s efforts, Ramona is underserved by a script that doesn’t know what to make of her all-consuming grief.
Ramona and her family in the Woman in the Yard.
Her children are equally perplexed, with Jackson’s Tyler mostly serving to painfully poke at Ramona’s grief as well as prod the limits of the movie’s premise (why can’t they leave or call for help?), while Kahiha’s Annie mostly serves to be put in peril as Ramona’s grip on her own reality begins to loosen. Okwui Okpokwasili’s Woman serves as an interesting antagonist, with her gangly physicality and deep, booming voice striking quite the figure, but the metaphor she ultimately serves feels simultaneously hacky and disturbing. When the film finally reveals its ultimate message, The Woman in the Yard transforms from mildly mystifying to unconscionably bleak.
The Woman in the Yard is not a total failure as a horror movie, thanks to Collet-Serra’s directorial skills and a genuinely terrific central performance from Deadwyler. But, despite its strong start and intriguing premise, it ultimately falls apart in its final minutes, thanks to its confused, overplotted narrative. In the end, The Woman in the Yard feels as inert as its titular woman.
