Review by C.J. Bunce
Since Blumhouse Productions started to secure the world of mainstream horror with the films Split, Get Out, and Happy Death Day, it’s held its own with reliable entertainment, even if some entries, like Five Nights at Freddy’s, didn’t really deliver on their full potential. So it’s a shame that director Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Woman in the Yard falls so flat. Now streaming on Peacock after a short run in theaters, trailers previewed something either Southern Gothic or Rural Noir. It certainly has the look of The Others, Skeleton Key, Signs, and maybe even Looper–every slow minute seems to be waiting for some kind of genre-bending twist to take hold. But it never arrives. In fact it’s difficult to ferret out what is going on with each character, the spooky antagonist of the title in particular.
First off, this is from Blumhouse, which means horror, and it was billed as such. It’s not really horror. The only thing scary about it is main character Ramona’s eyes as she responds in fear to everything around her. But that’s not horror, that’s just drama. It’s a drama about a woman with debilitating depression following a car crash that killed her husband. For some reason she has her two kids living with her in some desolate rural farm situation with no neighbors, no power, no working phone, and no working automobile. In the real world it’s probably time to take her kids away. She doesn’t even have food for her dog, yet somehow the chickens seem well fed, the crops are tended, and someone just hung the clean laundry out to dry. If these are hints at some subplot, it’s impossible to know.
Then an old woman shows up sitting on a chair in their farm yard. She’s cloaked in black. Is she a ghost? She seems to have supernatural abilities allowing her to move things with her shadows. So, that’s promising as scary movies go. But when she unveils herself to Ramona’s son she doesn’t look familiar to him or anyone else presumably. She just reveals a hidden secret. Again, not scary. She certainly looks nothing like Ramona. She says “Today’s the day,” which starts off the creeps for the audience. Day for what? Apparently the day for Ramona’s suicide. That’s where the entertainment grinds to a halt. At least M. Night Shyamalan’s similarly moody piece Signs had a scary alien walk by at the midpoint and make us all jump out of our seats. But there is no monster here apparently, just somehow Ramona seeing something that isn’t there, that somehow her kids can see, too. Somehow the Woman is just Ramona’s mind messing with her. This might work with better direction, better editing, better cinematography, sound effects, music, and/or a better script. Probably all of the above. But here it lacks it all.
After a slow build up the only result is a scene that is disturbing and incomprehensible, followed by a quick flash to a happily ever after where even the dog (thank goodness) shows up as fine and not killed like the chickens. What did the chickens do wrong anyway? If you want to know what it all means you’ll need to go look it up in interviews. The bottom line is the film is not successful at what it’s trying to do.
Danielle Deadwyler (Station Eleven) plays Ramona in a role she performs well. it just doesn’t provide enough character development or understandable action for the actor to make it work. Russell Hornsby plays her husband in flashbacks, a welcome return of an actor who should have far more roles after his run on Grimm. Peyton Jackson and Estella Kahiha play the kids, and Okwui Okpokwasili (Agatha All Along) is the Woman in the Yard. Blumhouse has been on a role this decade with good mainstream horror movies. This one unfortunately doesn’t live up to the rest.
It also could use a trigger warning for anyone with depression or suicide issues.
A Blumhouse picture you’ll probably want to take a pass on, from Universal Pictures look for The Woman in the Yard not in your yard but now streaming on Peacock.
