The Woman in the Yard review – forgettable ghostly horror

Don’t you hate it when you lose your husband in a car accident which also shatters your leg and destroys your sense of self only to find yourself plagued by a mysterious garden-dwelling entity weeks later? This is the situation that Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) finds herself in after her beloved husband David (Russell Hornsby) passes away. In the immediate aftermath, almost catatonic with grief and still badly injured herself, Ramona has been neglecting her children Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and Annie (Estella Kahiha) and struggling to keep up with the household chores. Then, one morning, Taylor spots a strange woman in a black shroud sitting on a chair in their yard.

The Woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) doesn’t leave when Ramona asks her to, instead ominously stating that she’s there because Ramona asked her to come. Ramona seems spooked by this statement and the vague suggestion The Woman might eat her children, retreating to the house and instructing her children to keep watch with her, despite her son’s suggestion they should go to a neighbour for help. There are a few contrived reasons the family are isolated – the power is out on their rural property, Ramona’s phone is out of battery and Taylor’s is broken. But Ramona insists on staying put, and eventually the yard-dweller starts creeping closer to the house.

While withholding information in a horror film can lead to a pervasive sense of confusion and dread that results in a satisfying payoff, The Woman in the Yard takes this to extremes, neglecting to provide any explanation as to who the titular Woman in the Yard is beyond the vague suggestion she is a manifestation of Ramona’ guilt and grief regarding her husband, and wants to harm her children. So it’s another horror movie about trauma, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the laser focus on Ramona means we aren’t granted much insight into how her children feel about the recent death of their father, which feels like a missed opportunity to provide a look at grief through the eyes of the film’s younger characters.

There’s still some novelty in a horror film that takes place mostly in daylight, though perhaps Jaume Collet-Serra’s film suffers in that regard coming relatively soon after Jordan Peele’s masterful Nope. While Collet-Serra has his staunch defenders, he’s mostly known as a Hollywood journeyman, responsible for numerous interchangeable Liam Neeson thrillers and the ridiculous but entertaining Carry-On which made a splash on Netflix over the festive period. The Woman in the Yard sees Collet-Serra return to the horror territory of House of Wax, Orphan and The Shallows which brought him considerable audience acclaim if not critical, but the filmmaker seems at odds with a film as restrained as this, not much helped by Sam Stefanak’s weak screenplay.

To her credit, Danielle Deadwyler gives a solid performance as a mother overwhelmed by grief, and newcomers Peyton Jackson and Estella Kahiha help to give some genuine emotion to an otherwise weak production. But there’s not enough here to sustain even a slim sub-90 minute runtime, and Collet-Serra seems lost when tasked with a project that provides little opportunity for dynamic action sequences or wild plot twists.