‘The Woman In The Yard’ review: haunting meditation on grief is not your garden-variety horror

“Mom, there’s a… woman in the yard.” This could be a laughable line in a high-concept movie so literal-minded that its entire plot is revealed not only in the trailer (a common plague) but actually in the title itself. For about 20 minutes, this seems to be the case with Spanish-American director Jaume Collet-Serra’s return to supernatural horror, which rocks up more than a decade-and-a-half after his last workout in the genre, 2009’s Orphan. But in one foul swoop – and yes, we do mean foul – he tips The Woman In The Yard upside down, summoning high-stakes scares and thought-provoking drama in almost equal measure.

It’s teenager Tay (Peyton Jackson) who delivers the aforementioned line. Along with his younger sister Annie (Estella Kahiha), he’s stranded on their rural Georgia farm, as their grief-stricken mother Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) ruminates on the death of the family’s patriarch (Russell Hornsby). The bills haven’t been paid in weeks, so there’s no electricity and therefore no way to charge their phones. It’s a neat way for writer Sam Stefanak to sidestep our hyperconnected age, which proves a challenge for so many modern horrors. But it also means that the movie is already pretty claustrophobic when a woman in a long black veil (Okwui Okpokwasili) appears in their front garden.

Why is she there? Even the woman herself doesn’t seem to know the answer, asking a question to the same effect before creepily commenting that Annie and Tay are “ripe enough to eat”. Instead of physically forcing this spectral figure from the property or running for help, the family stay put, watching her fearfully from the window. It’s the first indication that this moving, often profound movie is far less literal than it might initially seem. When the narrative switch comes, it’s a shocking jolt that suggests the real danger could be of this realm. As the iconic horror line goes, “the call is coming from inside the house”.

Instead of being a deliciously daft trash fest, then, The Woman In The Yard is an impressionistic, arthouse-style horror flick about grief and depression; it’s a film full of mirror images, as the narrative shatters and pieces itself back together on more than one occasion, confounding yet more expectation. Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski (who worked with Ari Aster on Hereditary and Midsommar) drenches the film in light, which only makes the titular figure more horrifying. Deadwyler is astonishing as Ramona, a woman who is barely holding it together before the supernatural events start to unfold. In this respect, it’s perhaps most comparable to 2014’s The Babadook.

This film’s spook probably won’t become a surprise camp icon, though, partly because she’s less outlandish than the ‘Dook and also because Collet-Serra conjures such an austere tone throughout. The Woman In The Yard nearly becomes too clever for its own good in its final act, but Stefanak pulls back just enough to maintain the structure of his deceptively emotive tale. It’s a shame the movie has such a goofy name, which throws a shroud over a powerful and unique cinematic experience. They probably should have just called it Ramona.