Danielle Deadwyler, Estella Kahiha, horror, Jaume Collet-Serra, movies, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peyton Jackson, reviews, Russell Hornsby, The Woman in the Yard
March 28, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional city of Dixon, Georgia, the horror film “The Woman in the Yard” features all-African American group of people representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A widow and her two underage children experience terror when a mysterious veiled woman shows up on their house’s front yard and won’t go away.
Culture Audience: “The Woman in the Yard” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Danielle Deadwyler and people who don’t mind watching incoherent horror movies.
“The Woman in the Yard” has a mysterious title character who is shrouded in a thin black veil. This ineptly made horror film is shrouded in lousy storytelling in making a thinly veiled, bungled statement about grief and tragic deaths. People might be confused by the ending of “The Woman in the Yard,” especially if they fall asleep during this very boring and muddled film.
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by Sam Stefanak, “The Woman in the Yard” has a small number of people in the movie’s cast. That doesn’t mean you will feel like you know these underdeveloped characters by the end of this 88-minute movie. “The Woman in the Yard” might have been more effective as a short film with a better ending, because what’s in the final cut of “The Woman in the Yard” is too flimsy for a feature-length film.
In “The Woman in the Yard” (which takes place in the fictional city of Dixon, Georgia), all the present-day scenes happen at the farm house of a widow named Ramona (played by Danielle Deadwyler), who is the movie’s protagonist. Ramona is recovering from injuries that she sustained during a recent car accident that killed her husband David (played by Russell Hornsby in flashback scenes), who worked as a farmer. The movie has a few flashbacks that show what happened at a location that isn’t the house.
Because of this car accident, Ramona has to use crutches, and her right leg is in a brace. She also has recurring dreams and visions of David. Ramona is isolated at the house with the two kids that she had with David: Taylor (played by Peyton Jackson) is her rebellious 14-year-old son. Annie (played by Estella Kahiha) is her obedient 6-year-old daughter.
It’s implied that’s because Ramona has been so caught up in grief, she’s neglected basic household responsibilities. The house has no electricity or phone service. The family is also running out of food. The only vehicle that the family has is the car that was in the accident. The truck is damaged, and injured Ramona cannot drive the car. Taylor isn’t old enough to get a drive.
The family has a Labradoodle named Charlie. (And you know what that means whenever there’s a family pet in a horror movie: Expect the pet to go missing.) An early scene in the movie shows Charlie vomiting because Taylor fed non-dog food to Charlie because there’s no more dog food in the house. Ramona promises Taylor that she’ll get more dog food when she can.
In one of the flashback scenes, it’s revealed that there were problems in the marriage of Ramona and David. The family had moved from an unnamed large city to a rural farm because Ramona felt that city life was too stressful for he. But now that she’s been living on a rural farm, Ramona still isn’t happy, because she had to give up her career in the city to be a farmer’s wife. On the rainy night of the car accident that killed David, the couple had an argument at the restaurant where they went for dinner.
One day, after David has died and the family is stuck in the house, the mysterious Woman in the Yard (played by Okwui Okpokwasili) suddenly appears in the front yard. She is seated on an ornate lawn chair. Taylor is the first to notice her. There’s no explanation for how she and the chair got there. Maybe she got the lawn chair at a yard sale where mysterious entities in bad horror movies get their furniture.
Ramona goes outside and asks the woman what she’s doing there. The woman asks Ramona what her name is, but Ramona will only introduce herself by saying her first name. The mysterious woman refuses to say her name, where she’s from, or how she got there. However, the woman seems to know a lot about Ramona and the family.
The Woman in the Yard also knows how to throw some shady comments. When Ramona says that her husband bought the farm house as a fixer-upper, the Woman in the Yard snarkily comments on the run-down house: “It still looks like he’s got a lot to fix.”
Ramona asks the woman to leave, but the woman refuses. Ramona nervously lies and says her husband will be home soon, but the Woman in the Yard isn’t fooled. The woman tells Ramona that she knows Ramona is lying, and David will never come back.
The woman then says a few other creepy things that are supposed to be clues to her reason for being there. The woman tells Ramona, “Your children are such darlings … ripe enough to eat.” The woman also says that Ramona already knows that Ramona called her. “Today’s the day,” the woman says ominously in a sing-song voice. Ramona then passively goes back into the house and tells her children that they shouldn’t disturb this woman in the yard.
This lazy movie then goes on a repeat loop of one of three scenarios: (1) Taylor wants to do something that Ramona says he can’t do, but Taylor does it anyway. (2) Ramona loses her temper, yells at her children, and implies that she might harm them. (3) Ramona tries to cover up information that she knows about the Woman in the Yard and disagrees with Taylor on how to handle this unwelcome stranger.
Viewers have to pay attention and remember some obscure clues that are supposed to make sense by the end of this awful film. Here’s one of the clues: Annie has been drawing and writing in a coloring book and keeps asking Ramona if she spelled certain words correctly. Annie has trouble spelling the letter “r,” which she spells backwards, like someone with dyslexia would spell this letter.
Although there’s nothing terrible about the acting performances in the movie, there’s not much to this poorly written story, which is a hodgepodge of psychological trauma and angry outbursts. A more accurate title of “The Woman in the Yard” is “The Woman in the House, Where She Constantly Scowls and Yells at Her Kids” because that’s really what this jumbled movie shows in too many scenes.
Don’t expect to feel scared when watching “The Woman in the Yard.” Just expect to be disappointed. If you’re still confused by the movie’s ending, a public-service announcement at the end of the movie should inform viewers what happened to one of the main characters. It should also ensure that this forgettable flop won’t get a sequel.
Universal Pictures released “The Woman in the Yard” in U.S. cinemas on March 28, 2025.