Review: The Woman in the Yard

Director:  Jaume Collet-Serra

Stars:  Okwui Okpokwasili, Danielle Deadwyler, Peyton Jackson

While Hollywood journeyman Jaume Collet-Serra has hardly been inactive over the past decade and a half, churning out semi-decent actioners for Liam Neeson as well as the holiday Netflix hit Carry-On, his return to horror will be a cause célèbre for fans of spirited efforts like Orphan or his schlocky, sticky 2005 House of Wax remake. His work is typified – for the most part – by stylish efficiency and, with a trim runtime of just 88 minutes, The Woman in the Yard is primed to hit all desired buttons with an effective directness.

Operating here with Blumhouse and with his star Danielle Deadwyler on board as a producer as well, Collet-Serra turns his hand to a kind of ghost story devised with a set of deliberate constraints in mind. We have a cast of just five and – a key flashback not withstanding – a single location. What’s more, for all it’s creative shadowplay, a lion’s share of The Woman in the Yard takes place in broad daylight. For newly widowed Ramona (Deadwyler), her teenage son Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and younger daughter Annie (Estella Kahiha) there’s really nowhere to hide.

It’s only been a short while since Ramona lost her husband David (Russell Hornsby) in a car accident in which she herself suffered a severe leg injury, and she’s been taking the loss hard. She and her children live on an isolated farm that David was intent on renovating and, through a confluence of (rather convenient) circumstances, she wakes one day with the power out and no means of calling for aid. Her relative immobility makes going for assistance tricky. What’s more, there’s a mysterious shrouded woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) sat out in the front yard who doesn’t seem intent on going away anytime soon…

The agitation caused by the Woman’s passive presence is telling of the fraught dynamics between the family members, all dealing with David’s loss to different degrees of success. A great deal of The Woman in the Yard is simple character work. And while the dialogue is sometimes a tad ungainly, the actors sell every beat. As limping Ramona shows the potential to turn against her children there’s more than a little Jack Torrance about her, and it feels like the film knows this. Deadwyler has been one of the most interesting players in American cinema for several years now, and she powers this thing with a frustrated, deeply wounded twitchiness. As for her younger co-stars, both seem at ease on screen, with Jackson (who’s had a few roles now) particularly coming across as one to keep an eye on. 

Tension mounts as the Woman exerts her influence over the house, and there’s some neat work with silhouettes and shadows, redolent of Nosferatu. If we’re collecting influences already, that’s appropriate, because The Woman in the Yard undeniably suffers from a sense of overfamiliarity, and even casual horror veterans will sniff out the main metaphorical expression that it’s antagonist represents. We’ve done Dark Embodiments of Grief a few too many times now. The inclination, then, might be to dismiss Collet-Serra’s addition to a cluttered subgenre that’s run it’s course. It’s far, far, far from subtle, but the latter half of the movie reveals an additional, thornier intention, one that the movie manages to handle with a surprising amount of compassion and sensitivity despite some blunt force visuals. There are wordless passages here that speak volumes (perhaps deafeningly so), but the earnestness to tackle something so difficult is ultimately admirable. 

It helps – and this is the movie’s major plus point – that the craft is impeccable throughout. Ari Aster’s go-to cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski is on hand and the results – particularly the lighting and focus choices – are just gorgeous. The house and it’s inhabitants glow from honied sunlight, accentuating the sense of a balmy day in the country that’s fast becoming soured. With the Woman an oft immobile presence – a mirror of hampered widow Ramona – the sound department becomes key in pushing her influence aurally. Composer Lorne Balfe comes into his own in the late stretches when the movie pares back to an almost wordless experience. Here Collet-Serra’s knife-edge earnestness is felt most keenly. But, like Shyamalan, he powers ahead with enough confidence to carry us along.

With it’s flexible reality and dicey reliance on visual storytelling, some elements of The Woman in the Yard come off a little confused, particularly the motivation behind a pivotal choice at the film’s end. It’s not quite tight as a drum. But if you can get past the nagging sense of déjà vu this is a well-mounted version of what feels like a classic fable. It’s as-deserving of a trigger warning at the top of the picture as Blink Twice was, and indeed there’s a mid-credits olive branch at the end of the picture for those effected by the film (too bad Universal/Blumhouse haven’t adapted this for foreign markets!). Still, it’s inclusion acknowledges that The Woman in the Yard might put some people through the wringer. Externalising deeply internalised pain can be fraught. For my money, in spite of some stumbles, this was as-decent or better than most.