The Woman in the Yard

Director Jaume Collet-Serra returns to his horror roots with somewhat mixed results.

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I suspect audiences will be disappointed with director Jaume Collet-Serra’s “The Women in the Yard” (now in theaters) as it isn’t the movie that was sold to them. This isn’t some Friday night thrill ride best enjoyed at your local multiplex. It’s first and foremost a meditation on grief and (trigger warning) a rumination on suicidal ideations.

Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) is pretty fucking far from living her best life. Her husband David (Russell Hornsby, anyone who’s seen this cat’s masterful turn in “The Hate U Give” knows he’s the goods) recently died in an automobile accident, which also left her with a broken leg. In her grief Ramona’s been somewhat neglectful of her teenage son Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and younger daughter Annie (Estella Kahina). She’s also been delinquent in paying her bills, so the family’s currently without phone or power. Their only unwrecked vehicle is also on the fritz.

Ramona, Taylor and Annie are living on a Georgia farm she never wanted, which proved to be a point of contention between she and her late husband. Taylor’s been picking up the slack looking after his sister and himself, but this is also causing conflict between mother and son.

Things go from bad to worse when our titular woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) dressed in a black dress and veil shows up seated atop a wrought iron chair in the family’s titular yard. Ramona attempts to engage the woman by asking how she got there and what’s she doing here to no avail. The woman creepily and in a singsongy manner declares, “Today’s the day.”

Collet-Serra takes a break from making Liam Neeson action-thrillers and returns to the horror roots he established with “House of Wax” (2005), “Orphan” and “The Shallows” by tackling “The Woman in the Yard.” Strangely, this very serious film is scripted by Sam Stefanak, a screenwriter whose primary credit is working on comedian Bill Burr’s Netflix adult cartoon “F Is for Family.”

There’s a lot about “The Woman in the Yard” to which I responded. Deadwyler, fresh off of December’s “Carry-On” … also directed by Collet-Serra, has proven herself to be one of our most exciting up-and-coming/working actors in projects such as “The Harder They Fall,” “Till” and “The Piano Lesson” and she’s expectedly excellent here, too. She’s strongly supported by child actors Jackson and Kahina. I was especially impressed by Jackson, who I could easily see growing into a Michael B. Jordan-type figure. It’s also cool to see a genre picture entirely populated by people of color.

Collet-Serra, his cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski (who’s having a busy week between this and “Holland”) and editors Timothy Alverson and Krisztian Majdik gift us with a cool and creatively-executed attic-set skirmish punctuated by a faulty flashlight.

I suspect Collet-Serra was attempting to ape the likes of Steven Spielberg and M. Night Shyamalan with “The Woman in the Yard,” but he comes up a tad shy. I genuinely believe this would’ve played better as a 20 or 30-minute short film and definitely overstays its welcome at an admittedly svelte 88 minutes.

I commend the filmmakers for giving us a conclusion that’s open to interpretation, but when one outcome reads as an endorsement of suicide it’s problematic (even with a credits-bound disclaimer/public service announcement). Even more annoying is the other, which I perceived as being too pat.