The Woman in the Yard is a 2025 psychological horror film film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, and the cast includes Danielle Deadwyler, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peyton Jackson, Estella Kahiha, and Russell Hornsby.
The Woman in the Yard is the latest film from Jaume Collet-Serra, and he’s usually good for a bit of fun, so when I saw his name on this one, I thought, “Alright, let’s do it. Bit of horror, maybe some cool visuals, spooky vibes, what could go wrong?” Apparently, everything, everything could go wrong.
The film kicks off with Danielle Deadwyler, who’s honestly way too talented to be in this mess, and she’s playing Ramona, a woman who just lost her husband in a car crash who is stuck in this farmhouse with her two kids, and they’re all grieving and fragile and isolated.
So far, sounds like the perfect setup for a horror movie, right?
One day, this woman shows up in their yard, who is dressed in black, has her face covered by a veil, and is just sitting there, who doesn' move and doesn't talk, and they of course wonder, “Who is she? What does she want?”
Now I like slow burn films, and I can appreciate mood and tension, but only if it’s going somewhere, but unfortnatly The Woman In The Yard never really gets going, nor goes anywhere.
The film tries really hard to be deep, like a lot of horror films these days, you know, where the ghost or demon is actually a metaphor for grief or guilt or bad parenting or whatever the hell, and I'm not against that, in theory, and I think Hereditary did it brilliantly, and The Babadook wasn't bad.
The Woman In The Yard though fails at this, despite its best efforts, and it just isn't interesting enough to warrant giving a damn.
There’s this moment near the end where the movie almost gets interesting, with a little emotional twist that could’ve landed if they’d earned it, and at this point I was thinking, “Oh, here we go. This is the part where it all makes sense, where it hits you in the guts.”
But nope. It flinches. It backs off. The film’s got no guts, no bite, it's just a whimper of a finish and you're left wondering if you missed something important or if the movie just forgot to finish writing itself.
The movie builds up this creepy vibe that is quite interesting, and it could have worked really well, but we get a few jump scares that are just really cheap, and towards the end they start doing some weird cool stuff with lighting and shadows and camera tricks, but by then, it's far too late.
On the plus side, I did enjoy Danielle Deadwyler's performance, and she pours emotion into every damn line, but the script’s giving her nothing, and the kids are good too, actually, and both of them deliver solid, grounded performances.
Overall though, I don’t hate what this movie wanted to be, and I can see the bones of something great here, and with a better script this could’ve been something powerful.
But what we got instead was style over substance, which can work if it was interesting enough, but unfortunately, The Woman In The Yard is just a bit too much on the boring side.