The Woman in the Yard: A Haunting Dive into Grief
The director behind the chilling 2000s horror classic Orphan, Jaume Collet-Serra, returns to weave another unsettling tale in The Woman in the Yard.
Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) lies in bed, replaying a video of her husband David (Russell Hornsby) sharing a dream: their home renovation complete, irises blooming in the yard. But reality shatters the reverie. David is gone, killed in a horrific accident hinted at by the brace on Ramona’s leg and the wrecked car in the farmyard. She’s a husk of herself, unable to pull free from grief’s undertow. Her children—teenager Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and young Annie (Estella Kahiha)—can’t reach her. The power’s cut off for unpaid bills, phones are dead, and breakfast is fried eggs with Doritos. The dog gnaws on stale porridge; no one’s bought food. Another sunlit yet frigid morning dawns, where nothing matters.
Then, something shifts. A mysterious figure cloaked in black (Okwui Okpokwasili) appears on the lawn, seated on an old wrought-iron chair as if she’s always belonged there. The camera captures her from angles—through glass, in reflections, amid sunlit glares—but her enigma persists. She’s mostly silent, her identity and purpose unclear. Like the rogue planet in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, she edges closer to the house with each passing hour. Or perhaps it’s Ramona who can no longer keep her at bay?
Sam Stefanak’s script is a puzzle. For the first half, viewers piece together the past: Where is David? What happened? Why does Ramona lash out at her kids and drown in unresolved chaos? Where’s the dog? Clues pile up—unopened letters, dirty dishes, missing matches, dwindling supplies. In one room, Annie tells her plush penguin a softened version of “The Three Little Pigs,” sparing the toy from fear—a subtle but pivotal moment. This initial stretch is deliberately slow, almost suffocating, lulling you into a false sense of predictability.
Just as the pieces align, the film abandons linearity, spiraling into a fever dream. The second half, reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, surges with symbols and metaphors. A shadowy hand brushes a doorbell, knocking objects from shelves. Annie, cradled by her mother, becomes a decorative pillow. The nameless woman steps inside yet lingers outside. Reality fractures like shattered glass, giving way to abstraction. The cracks in Ramona’s psyche widen into chasms, becoming an impassable divide between the tangible world and her inner turmoil. The Woman in the Yard isn’t a horror about a single menacing figure—it’s about the terror of succumbing to depression’s weight.
Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra, known for Orphan and House of Wax, has recently ventured into action thrillers like Black Adam and Jungle Cruise. With The Woman in the Yard, he returns to his horror roots, echoing themes from films like Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, where family trauma manifests as a monster, or Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow, where external fears birth personal dread. The true horror, Collet-Serra suggests, isn’t lurking in the yard or under the bed—it’s within.
Much of the film unfolds in broad daylight, with blue skies and blazing sun, a paradoxical choice that amplifies its unease. Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, a collaborator of Ari Aster, manipulates angles and light to stretch the woman’s shadow unnaturally, seeping through tiny windows and curtain gaps. One striking shot—a flashlight spinning across the floor, pulling images from the dark—lingers in the mind. The film’s editing and effects are equally inventive: photographs shift under a lighter’s flame, a single step sends Ramona through a looking glass, and a camera turn swaps locations.
In its climax, Collet-Serra offers a fork in the road. You can embrace the stiflingly grim resolution or choose a gentler path, much like Annie’s rewritten fairy tale for her penguin, softened to ease the fear.
