The Woman in the Yard: A Review (Review #2227)

THE WOMAN IN THE YARD

What could be scarier than a creepy woman, cloaked all in black, sitting ominously outside one's house? My guess would be just about anything. The Woman in the Yard attempts to be eerie and ominous. It ends up being both unintentionally hilarious and surprisingly insensitive towards a serious topic. 

Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) is a physical and psychological mess. Recently widowed, she cannot escape the video memories of her late husband David (Russell Horsby). Judging from appearances, she would like to escape her teenage son Taylor or Tay (Peyton Jackson) and her younger daughter Annie (Estella Kahiha). They live on an isolated farm that was never formally named. They have little food, virtually no money to pay the various utilities, and one dog. 

Out of nowhere, a woman covered all in black appears near their house. Ramona goes to confront "the woman in the yard" but finds that said woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) is not easily persuaded to leave. In fact, The Woman tells Ramona that "today is the day". Tay is all for getting rid of "Miss Weirdo Funeral Lady". Ramona, however, insists that she can take care of it. We don't know how given that they have no telephone service and apparently have little to no communication with any neighboring farms. 

It becomes a game of supernatural cat-and-mouse where one wonders which one of the two women is the more bonkers one. Is it the creepy creature sitting in her noir ensemble, or is it the mother who fantasizes about stabbing her daughter in the back? Not is all at it appears to be, especially when we flash back to David's death. 

He was killed in a car accident that left Ramona injured. However, we learn that Ramona was deeply unhappy with her life? Could the accident have been a failed suicide attempt? Only the woman in the yard knows, and she tells all to Tay. We discover that both the woman in the yard and Ramona are truly connected, but will the former manage to get the latter to join David in the afterlife?

Perhaps I can find how The Woman in the Yard had a very small cast something to admire. Other than that, I think I'm pretty out of things to admire or like about this film. I do not know if screenwriter Sam Stefanak and director Jaume Collet-Serra thought some tall woman skulking about a front yard would send chills. I was too busy wondering why, given her leg injury, Ramona wouldn't have done better to stay on the ground floor instead of schlepping up and down the stairs. I think Collet-Serra wanted to compensate for the lack of frights by filming much of The Woman in the Yard with various Dutch angles and with rapid editing. 

It did not work for Battlefield Earth. It did not work for The Woman in the Yard. 

Perhaps the point of The Woman in the Yard was not that it was scary. In that case, the film succeeded beyond the hopes of anyone involved. I think that The Woman in the Yard fancied itself a metaphysical exploration of grief and the evil lure of suicide. If memory serves correct, the film ends with information about how to contact suicide prevention. If that was the intention, I find another problem with the film.

Suicide is a very serious topic. It has devastated millions of lives. Treating suicide, even unintentionally, as something prompted by otherworldly figures is very troubling to me. I am deeply uncomfortable with that idea. I am also deeply troubled when any film puts children in danger. The Woman in the Yard has a sequence where it looks like Ramona is stabbing Annie. We quickly see that she is really stabbing a pillow and that Annie is safe. Still, no matter how disturbed Ramona may be, the entire concept of killing your children is not something I would put in a supposed supernatural film.

Stefanak's screenplay is pretty much a mess. It certainly isn't subtle. Late in the film during a flashback to the fatal car crash, we see the title The Mirror Has Two appear reflected on the passenger side. I presume that the film was The Mirror Has Two Faces. Granted, I have yet to see the Barbra Streisand film as of today. However, I don't exactly know what exactly a film I was led to think was a romantic comedy has to do with supernatural figures urging women to kill themselves. I figure that the title was used to flash "SYMBOLISM" in our face.

It might have done better not to flash so many lights in the third act. At this point, the title character has now been able to enter the house and is threatening everyone inside. I figure that we are supposed to be frightened to terrified. However, the thing that is supposed to make things scary doesn't. It really is just hard to follow with a lot of flashing lights all over the place. It reminds of those low-rent amusement carnivals that had those haunted houses. If I understand Ramona's motives, she opts to, perhaps unintentionally, kill poor David because she fills unfulfilled and is unhappy with her life.

This is not exactly a strong motive for murder. Ramona can change her life. She does not have to kill her husband or herself to do so. It does also lead to a moment that did make me chuckle. "But if you want things to get better, you've got to dig deeper", David tells her before he dies. I just wondered, "where was Mama Odie when you need her?" 

I think The Woman in the Yard tried too hard to be twisty when it just ended up muddled. That third act is just so convoluted that one has completely lost interest.

It also does not help that The Woman in the Yard has some absolutely terrible performances. Danielle Deadwyler had a tough act to follow after Till. We were incessantly told how Deadwyler gave the single greatest acting performance in all human history in Till. I suppose that it would be impossible to reach such grand heights after giving the most brilliant, awe-inspiring acting performance ever captured or likely ever to be captured on camera for Till. Now, I think that The Woman in the Yard showed that she could not muster a second greatest acting performance in all human history. I never felt Ramona was a troubled, grieving figure trying to keep it all together. I thought she was a mean, bossy, abusive figure to her kids. 

Both Peyton Jackson and Estella Kahiha looked bored and lost in The Woman in the Yard. There was no emotion in their performances. Okwui Okpokwasili, I figure, might have been having some fun coming across as a demonic Miss Grace Jones, skulking and posing all over the place. I will give Jackson a bit of credit for making me laugh after he shouts, "She's on crazy pills!" when it came to his mother. 

Suicide is a serious topic, one that should be handled with finesse. The Woman in the Yard, to my mind, used it as a plot device to what we were led to think was a horror film. I do not think that the two mix, at least here. The Woman in the Yard is not scary. It is not insightful. It is not well-acted. If I were to find anything good in it, at least it was short at around 89 minutes. Try as the film did, one cannot make black-cloaked ladies into something to fear. 

DECISION: F