The Woman in the Yard is a horror movie by Blumhouse from director Jaume Collet-Serra, who has given us some incredible films from all across the genre through the years including House of Wax and Orphan. He recently dazzled with action-packed thriller Carry-On on Netflix.
Woman in the Yard was written by screenwriter Sam Stefanak. The film follows Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) as a widowed mother struggling with her grief over the death of her husband in a car accident that also left her disabled. She is doing her best to care for her children in their fixer-upper farmhouse, while trying to process what happened to her.
Her children, Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and Annie (Estella Kahiha), are managing their grief in thier own way, trying to adjust to their now emotionally-unavailable mother. In the process, a woman dressed in black appears in a chair in the yard, claiming that "today is the day" and antagonizing the family as she continues to creep closer and closer to the home. With no power and no one who can drive, the family is faced with tackling this threat alone.
Blumhouse is a machine when it comes to making these isolated short horrors with low budgets that can turn around and make money in the theaters quickly. The Woman in the Yard is a brisk 85 minutes, it all takes place in one location over the course of largely one day. At its best, this film looks great. There is a sense of dread and isolation at the farmhouse and with no ability for the family to run, it locks the viewer in its world, suffocating them with atmosphere and dread. The shadow work is fantastic, it is hard to create that sense of an invisible malevolent force and this film excels at making you feel that presence even when it isn't visibly on the screen.
Deadwyler is really strong in this role. Although not really playing a likeable character, she is able to convey that feeling of a woman living right on the edge of the knife. We get rage, depression, love, and confusion from her, as she hits emotional notes that carry the film forward. We get a great set of performances from the kids as well, especially Peyton Jackson, who plays Tay, who portrays a teenager in strife excellently. The range of emotions he goes through in the film are broad and purposeful, moving from protective to horrified to defiant in quick succession.
The issues from this film lie in its execution of the storyline. The Woman is a very interesting concept, a living totem of grief come to claim what is hers, but the film rarely focuses on her. For the first half of the run time, it really feels more like a slowburn drama focused on a family falling apart. Drawing more attention to the terrifying figure would have made the stranglehold that this film places the viewer in that much tighter.
Although shorter, you really feel the length of this film, there just wasn't enough here to justify the feature-film length and I really feel it would have worked much better as an episode in a tight 40 minutes. The symbolism here is also quite ham-fisted, it doesn't really allow the viewer to form their own observations, rather clocking them over the head with the intention and pointing at it so they know for sure. While it is clear that there is something to say in this film, some nuance and a lighter touch might have bumped up the emotional impact by the end.
While it does have its flaws, The Woman in the Yard is unique in that it provides a good twist on PG-13 horror, it is a real psychological horror that requires you to think and connect the dots of grief and emotions throughout. Usually this section of the genre is filled with half-baked jump scares and possessions but this film provides a different look into what a beginner horror could look like and its buoyed by strong impactful performances that help it chug along. You can still see Woman in the Yard in theaters and support this original and unique film.