Cast: Danielle Deadwyler, Okwui Okpokwasili, Russell Hornsby, Peyton Jackson, Estella Kahiha
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Director: Jaume Colllet-Serra
In Irish Cinemas: 28th March 2025
Horror films have increasingly become a formulaic product, meticulously designed to jolt audiences with an endless barrage of jump scares, eerie apparitions, and supernatural twists. These days, it’s rare to find a horror release that’s an outright failure—most at least manage to deliver the expected frights. But The Woman in the Yard comes close. It’s a haunted house movie that forgets to bring real tricks.
The film opens with Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) lying in bed, watching a video on her phone. In it, her husband, David (Russell Hornsby), describes a dream in which the farmhouse they are renovating is finally complete. The contrast between his hopeful vision and Ramona’s current reality is stark—David is nowhere to be found, and as she struggles to get out of bed, we see the brace running the length of her broken leg. The details are left unspoken, but they quickly fall into place: there was a car accident, and David didn’t survive. A wrecked vehicle sits abandoned in the yard, an ominous and unexplained presence.
Downstairs, Ramona half-heartedly attempts to engage with her children: Tay (Peyton Jackson), a moody teenager with a rebellious streak, and Annie (Estella Kahihi), her younger, more cheerful sibling. Tay has prepared a breakfast of eggs and Doritos—an offering Ramona barely acknowledges. She is too consumed by grief to muster the energy for essential responsibilities, like calling the electric company when the power goes out. Depression can be fertile ground for a horror narrative, but a film about depression shouldn’t feel as sluggish and lifeless as the condition itself. Yet, for its first half hour, The Woman in the Yard does precisely that—every emotion is spelt out, yet little happens.
Then, at last, the titular figure appears. Seated about a hundred feet from the house, she is draped in flowing black fabric that conceals everything but her hands, which rest calmly in her lap, Mona Lisa-like. She looks less like a ghost and more like a Victorian beekeeper in mourning. Strangely, both children immediately refer to her as a “woman” despite having no real way of knowing what—or who—she is.
Ramona ventures outside to confront the mysterious figure, who, in a surprising turn, speaks back with an eerie yet composed civility. Played by Okwui Okpokwasili, an artist and performer with an imperious presence reminiscent of Grace Jones, the woman in the yard is no knife-wielding spectre. She doesn’t threaten or attack. Instead, she knows—about Ramona, her pain, and what must come next. She is less a traditional ghost and more a harbinger of fate, waiting patiently for Ramona’s inevitable surrender. Yet, for much of the film, she does little more than sit, a static symbol of the movie’s inertia.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a horror film that operates through suggestion rather than outright terror. When executed well, subtle can be far more chilling than blunt-force scares. But The Woman in the Yard isn’t so slight as thin and noticeable. It may move slower than the average studio horror film, but it’s just as predictable—only with fewer tricks up its sleeve.
At one point, the woman in the yard finally enters the house, and for a brief moment, the film jolts awake. A chaotic supernatural sequence erupts—objects flying, rooms shaking—so wildly out of sync with the rest of the film that you can almost hear a producer in the background demanding, “We need to ‘Poltergeist’ this up!” But it’s too little, too late.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra, best known for Orphan (a film that has since found a home in the cult schlock canon), never manages to elevate the tension beyond a dull simmer. Sam Stefanak’s screenplay borrows liberally from The Shining without any of its psychological depth. We’re trapped in that farmhouse alongside Ramona and her children, watching them pick at their trauma like a scab, but the film never finds a compelling way to make their suffering resonate.
Danielle Deadwyler, a powerhouse actress, does what she can with the material, but the film’s one-note misery shackles her performance. Ramona isn’t given room to evolve—she remains locked in a monotone state of grief, making it difficult to invest in her journey. The Woman in the Yard ultimately fails to terrify, intrigue, or even unsettle. It’s not haunting—it’s just stuck, like its central character, trapped in an endless loop of despair with nowhere interesting to go.
Overall: 6/10
Movie Reviewer
