150 Word Review: 'The Woman In The Yard' (2025)
She's still there
Yes, the title character is a ghost-like figure menacing a traumatized family trapped in a house, but The Woman In The Yard isn't a simple horror story. Director Jaume Collet-Serra and screenwriter Sam Stefanak want more than standard-issue jump scares. This is a hallucinatory and claustrophobic domestic drama about grief and depression.
Danielle Deadwyler is phenomenal as a recently widowed mother of two. The Woman In The Yard opens with her, stunned by loss, hypnotized by a phone video of her late husband that she’s watching—and rewatching. Her son has to rouse her from her bed. She is on crutches because she survived the car accident.
One morning, a shadowy woman appears, sitting in a chair, hands folded, across from their falling-apart farmhouse. Watching, judging, haunting. Creeping ever closer. The movie doesn't crescendo; it collapses. The climax is profoundly sad. Madness is like dusk; it descends and swallows the sun.