Matthew Percefull
The Woman In The Yard is the latest offering from Blumhouse, a studio that has garnered a divisive reputation. To some, they’re the studio that helped revitalize the horror genre with innovative ideas like Paranormal Activity or The Purge. To others, they’re the studio notorious for recent duds like Night Swim or Imaginary. The Woman In The Yard adds depth to the Blumhouse library. The new supernatural chiller starring Danielle Deadwyler uses horror tropes to explore grief, guilt, and the insurmountable pressures of motherhood.
The Woman In The Yard tells you very early on what kind of film it is: a film about grief. We learn within the first few scenes that Ramona (Deadwyler) has recently lost her husband (Russell Hornsby) to a traumatic car crash. She still bears a nasty leg injury from it that greatly limits her mobility. The fresh wound of grief mixed with this limited mobility leaves Ramona a shell of herself. She spends the majority of her time rewatching old family videos in her bedroom. Her two children, Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and Annie, are caught in the crossfire as they take the brunt of her frustrations. When a woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) dressed in all black appears on their front lawn, tensions rise within the family as they battle for control against the mysterious figure.
Where this movie excels is the dynamic between this family. The Woman in the Yard is an effective family drama with a horror story surrounding it. Ramona struggles to relinquish the minimal control she still has left as Taylor begs to take on any responsibility. This leads to a resentment that both performers portray beautifully.
The tensest moments here aren’t involving the titular Woman in the Yard at all. They’re arguments between a mother and her son. We see multiple times that Ramona is beyond her breaking point. It’s represented physically by her house falling apart and the stitches not holding in her leg. More importantly it’s represented by the woman. The woman is the darkness that Ramona is hiding. The darkness that seeps out no matter how hard she conceals it. When this film focuses on this existential dilemma, it works. It’s when it dips into horror cliches that it can get just a bit unfocused. Which brings me to the third act.
The first two acts of The Woman in the Yard are riveting and emotionally poignant. Once it remembers it’s a horror film and needs an exciting climax, it leans into tropes it seemed too intelligent for earlier. The story becomes extremely confusing, and it becomes hard to tell what is happening and what’s not literal. I’m all for surreal storytelling and metaphors, but the amount of proto twists that happen in the final 20 minutes is genuinely hard to keep up with.
There is a very powerful scene involving a shotgun that speaks to the overall theme of mental health and grief. The scene is dark and makes references to suicide that some viewers will be caught off guard by. The Woman in the Yard wraps up in a somewhat satisfying manner that does feel a bit convenient. This last bit of the film is by no means bad. There are some clever scares using shadows and lighting. Okwui Okpokwasili is also perfectly menacing as the villain.
The acting all around does a great job at grounding the film in such a somber narrative. Danielle Deadwyler has never phoned in a performance, and she’s particularly magical here. She plays the role of being a widow while also having to feign strength to protect her children. She also has to be quite physical with her performance because her character has a serious leg injury. Danielle pulls this off effortlessly. Peyton Jackson is a huge standout here as well. He holds his own with Deadwyler in quite a few shouting matches. For an actor so young, it’s quite impressive. He has to lead a portion of this film towards the middle, and he is great. It’s hard to find a competent child actor, so when one shows flashes of greatness, it’s even more awe-inspiring.
Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, The Shallows) returns to the horror genre after a long foray into action filmmaking. The Woman in the Yard features his freshest directing in years. It looks gorgeous, and the wide angles add to the tone of dread that the film contains. Regardless of how you feel about the story and its execution, The Woman In The Yard is a technical marvel. The sound design is crisp and perfectly ominous. Cinematographer Pawel Porgorzelski did a great job here as well. It’s hard to make such a small and simple space look as cinematic as it does here. The way this film is shot, with so many wide angles that sometimes contain scares in the background, keeps your eye busy the whole time, waiting for that next release of tension. The use of shadows here is especially genius. The main antagonist uses shadows to terrorize our main family. In every scene, you never trust whether it’s just a shadow or a manifestation of our villain. Many small decisions like this make the watch more satisfying.
Despite being a bit uneven, The Woman In The Yard is a well-made horror film that has much to say about the human condition. The marketing and title may make this seem like your run-of-the-mill Blumhouse picture, but it couldn’t be further from that. With a runtime of 88 minutes, The Woman in the Yard is a breezy watch that will have you thinking for weeks after. It’s a thought provoking meditation of grief with some powerhouse performances. Maybe the simple concepts haven’t been the issue at Blumhouse, they just lacked the heart to carry them. The Woman in the Yard has heart and then some.
