‘The Woman in the Yard’: Get Off My Lawn, Ghost Lady!

A movie so scattershot and scare-free that it’ll only inspire impersonations of Clint Eastwood growling “Get off my lawn!,” The Woman in the Yard is a depressing follow-up to Carry-On for director Jaume Collet-Serra and star Danielle Deadwyler.

Like a tangled weed that curls and twists about with no apparent rhyme or reason, this turgid thriller (in theaters now) has a strong central image and little idea how to build a narrative around it. Even at a brisk 85 minutes, it’s a bigger slog than a day spent mowing the grass.

The Woman in the Yard is a case of truth in advertising, telling a story about Ramona (Deadwyler), her teen son Taylor (Peyton Jackson), and young daughter Annie (Estella Kahiha) discovering a bizarre figure (Okwui Okpokwasili) seated in a chair on the edge of their property.

Motionless, clad in black (including her face, which is covered by a veil), and with her hands clasped on her lap, this stranger strikes an instantly ominous pose, alarming the trio who are ensconced in the farmhouse they used to share with their patriarch David (Russell Hornsby). Freaked out about why this individual has situated herself in their yard, and eager to learn what she wants, Ramona ventures outside to have a chat.

Moving to and fro isn’t easy for Ramona, since her right leg is encased in a giant brace that—along with the crutches she needs to get around—underlines that she’s been in a recent, serious accident. Given that The Woman in the Yard begins with her morosely watching a video of David talking about a dream he had regarding their “perfect” rural property, as well as the fact that he’s nowhere to be found and Ramona is wracked by a vision of headlights, honking horns, and shattered glass, it’s easy to deduce that he perished in a car crash which Ramona survived.

While Taylor doesn’t overtly articulate his sorrow, he’s clearly in pain. Moreover, he’s frustrated with his mom, who’s turned into a shut-in and whose general parental negligence now extends to a series of overdue bills that have left them without power—and, consequently, phone service.

Written by Sam Stefanak, The Woman in the Yard initially establishes its premise through telling images and shorthand gestures, and that efficiency allows it to swiftly get to its central conflict. Despite Ramona’s inquiries, the Woman offers up virtually no information about herself, speaking in a soft and pleasant voice that belies her menacing appearance, and her announcement that “Today’s the dayyy” greatly amplifies her creepiness.

Frazzled but unwilling to let her kids know that they might be in danger, Ramona retreats to their abode and lies to Taylor and Annie. Nonetheless, she’s unable to keep things calm, what with the family dog barking like mad—and then vanishing altogether, even though he was chained up outside—and Taylor wanting to take more drastic action. Annie’s inability to do her spelling homework correctly (she keeps writing her Rs backwards as if she were The Shining’s Danny Torrance) additionally preys upon Ramona’s nerves, as does Taylor’s provocative ball-playing inside the house.

With long braids and a wonky leg, Deadwyler’s performance is all terrified and unhinged glances, and The Woman in the Yard pushes its protagonist into crazier territory courtesy of hallucinations in which she picks at her wound to the point of pulling an enormous stitch out of her skin, and stabs Annie with a giant kitchen knife. Mirrors and reversed lettering are recurring motifs, but they don’t coalesce evocatively and turn out to be merely half-baked hints about the wonkiness of the clan’s dilemma. Whether the film’s ungainliness is the byproduct of Stefanak’s script or editorial triage, it escalates with each passing scene.

No matter her muddled mental state, Ramona understands that they’re in trouble, checking on their jeep (which doesn’t work) and keeping the kids as far away as possible from the Woman. Still, she irrationally refuses to let Taylor go to a neighboring residence for help or to arm himself with his dad’s gun, instead opting to behave if she were in a drugged-out haze—a notion bolstered by Taylor slandering her for taking “crazy pills.”

Nonetheless, that thread is barely developed by The Woman in the Yard, and a flashback scene to the dinner that preceded Ramona and David’s fateful fender bender provides meager context for the present madness. Whereas the film’s early plotting was concise, its later passages devolve into semi-incoherence as the Woman draws closer and closer to the house—and, at a certain juncture, reveals her face and begins demonstrating her shadowy supernatural powers.

Collet-Serra knows how to light a scene—his use of a spinning and flickering flashlight to illuminate a skirmish in the farm’s attic is striking—and his framing is equally strong, epitomized by a master shot that starkly delineates the simultaneous distance between, and closeness of, Ramona and the Woman. It’s thus dispiriting to find the film’s form so awkward and ineffective.

In its closing third, The Woman in the Yard assumes the unreliable and surreal perspective of Deadwyler’s widow, and yet rather than creating a sense of terrifying disorientation, it just confounds. The same goes for the Woman herself, whose true nature is discernible but who remains, throughout, a vague and dull specter rather than a truly unnerving manifestation of Ramona’s grief and guilt.

The Woman in the Yard leaves many pertinent details by the roadside, and the answers it does proffer are underwhelming. Full of screaming, crashing and thrashing this way and that, the finale verges on cartoonish, and while Deadwyler never treats Ramona with anything less than seriousness, the material doesn’t follow her lead.

Neither malevolent enough to frighten nor lucid enough to be moving, it resorts to hackneyed maneuvers and paint-by-numbers psychology to justify its bedlam, culminating with revelations that are painfully predictable—although to be fair, Collet-Serra and Stefanak’s tale affords any number of clichéd avenues to traverse.

“You seem confused and lost,” says Ramona to her unexpected visitor during their maiden encounter. She may as well have been talking to the film itself.