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.