A mysterious woman dressed in a black gown and veil appears in Ramona's yard one morning, sitting by the road on a chair that hadn't been there before, and barely moving. When Ramona goes out to question her, she merely says, "Today's the day," offering no idea about who she is or how she came to be there. Once she sees the woman's bloody hands, though, Ramona all but flies back inside, ordering her two children to remain indoors as well. If today is the day, it'll be a long one: the power has been cut off to their remote house as a result of unpaid bills stacking up quickly. Ramona and her kids -- teen son Tay and preteen daughter Annie -- are still grieving the loss of her husband (Russell Hornsby) from an auto accident that also broke Ramona's leg. She relies heavily on Tay, who has proven himself a capable man of the house; she's also clearly wallowing in her pain whereas the kids at least seem to have begun moving on with their lives.
It doesn't take long to tell that the film will be a character study far more than a home invasion thriller. And that seems appropriate, as the last decade of horror films has demonstrated quite the tendency to dramatize issues of guilt, mental illness, depression, and trauma in supernatural and often neo-Gothic terms. Call it "elevated horror" or not, these films deploy monsters less in a traditional sense and more in a metaphoric sense that, given enough psychic stress and horror, any person can snap and become monstrous. The titular woman in the yard, in this story, does end up moving closer to the house, threatening the family dog, children, and finally mother as she and her shadow menace them, but her purpose and identity are the clear revelations to which the plot will eventually wend its way. I won't spoil it here, but it's also not a groundbreaking storytelling technique, and you'll likely guess it relatively quickly.
But a central mystery does not, for me, a film make or break. The Woman in the Yard might not be complex or dynamic in its emotional heft and character-based story, which will annoy and turn off some audiences. But it has its boons, first and foremost in Danielle Deadwyler as Ramona; her craft is always amazing to watch, here anchoring the film in a sense of urgent, desperate reality. She can't defend her home and protect her children by herself, but she doesn't seem quite ready to relinquish full power over her son. We wonder, early in the film, why, despite her apathy and isolationism, she doesn't foster a domestic atmosphere of honesty, interdependence, or even communal responsibility. Our questions will be answered by the film's climax in highly satisfying ways; not satisfying in terms of plot development, but satisfying in seeing and appreciating the nuanced depth Deadwyler brings to her character.
Additionally, the film's style is worth watching, and I'll be watching it again for that. Jaume Collet-Serra has long been a director of interest to me, from his fun and silly crime thrillers to big-budget major IPs, but his horror efforts tend to be genre-bendy, clever, and never less than thrilling. This return to his most robust form features perhaps not the most inventive of his material, but in as much as this safely PG-13 film can, it does represent his command of aesthetic and tone. Not much can be done about the screenplay, which is workmanlike but effective in targeting its modest aims (apparently this project is the screenwriter's feature debut), but Collet-Serra and his cinematographer Pawl Pogorzelski (who shot Ari Aster's feature films in addition to Blue Beetle and Fresh) do some really fabulous work in making the film visually arresting and memorable. Elements of shadow play should have been improved but are still nice to see, and the haunting daylight-drenched imagery worked really well for me. Playing on larger, better ideas may not be enough to win awards or a strong legacy, but I admire this film for its willingness to play with expectations and determination to make its gamble worthwhile.
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