The Woman in the Yard (2025) Review
"Today's the day..."
Blumhouse strikes again. The Woman in the Yard uses well-crafted sound design and stunning visuals to hide the fact that it is yet another horror film that fails to deliver on its promises.
In The Woman in the Yard, directed by Jaume Collet Serra (Orphan, House of Wax), we meet Ramona, a mother of two children who is struggling with a broken leg, grief, and depression after her husband died in a car accident. Her oldest, Tay (Peyton Jackson), is taking care of everything from making breakfast to helping with his younger sister, Annie (Estella Kahiha), who Ramona yells at him for never watching. The first thirty minutes are spent telling us just how bad things are in this eerie farmhouse. The electricity is off because Ramona barely gets out of bed. Her phone is dead and their car doesn’t work. Tay is angry that his mother is lost to them and he has no problem calling her out for it. One minute she is yelling and the next she is apologizing, clearly battling herself at every turn. Flowers on the entryway table start out with some color and slowly become as dead as Ramona is on the inside. When the woman in the yard shows up, the film then becomes as predictable as everything Blumhouse has put out in the last two years.
Ramona is a broken woman, mentally and physically. She sits up on the side of her bed, praying for strength. But the strength to do what? That is what this film is about. It’s about Ramona coming face to face with the darkness that lurks in her mind and no matter how hard she tries to keep it at bay, it moves closer and closer until it takes over. While I understand the grim messaging behind Sam Stefanak’s script, its storytelling left more to be desired.
If seeing Okwui Okpokwasili draped in black sitting in an open field is what drew you in, you are not alone. This image is still as haunting as it was in the trailer. With her stillness, her voice, and even the way she approaches the house with elegance and an almost divine presence, you can’t help but acknowledge how terrifying she is. Pawel Pogorzelski, the cinematographer behind films like Hereditary and Midsommar, is skilled at capturing the emotion and tantalizing fear in his movements. Coupled with the sound design, which often sounds like Ramona is underwater, or drowning as she says, causing us to walk in Ramona’s shoes and understand what it’s like when she faces off with her overwhelming depression. Collet-Serra uses shadows and darkness to evoke unease and heighten tension, keeping viewers on edge. Yet, despite the buildup of tension, the ending renders it all hollow, failing to justify the things that came before.
What a missed opportunity to tap into Black American folklore. The film feels like a Southern gothic folktale for about an hour before it becomes another Blumhouse movie. The woman draped in her black veil and dressed in a black gown sitting in the front yard making her way closer and closer until she can get inside is a frightening concept. But that is where the intrigue with this film ends. And we are left with another film that places trauma and brokenness on a Black family. While The Woman in the Yard delivers on visuals, sound, and performances, its overdone story keeps it from being truly memorable.