The Woman in the Yard (2025)
Danielle Deadwyler, Peyton Jackson, Estella Kahiha, Okwui Okpokwasili, Russell Hornsby
Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra

I’m always weary about Blumhouse pictures. They can be really good, but they can also be total shite. This one seems to fall somewhere in the middle.

When a mysterious woman giving cryptic warnings appears in the yard of a recently widowed mother of 2 children, she must fight the ever-increasing threat the woman poses.

Grief as horror is a slightly tired trope by now, but there’s no denying that if it’s done right, it can pack a punch. This one doesn’t quite get there. The acting was mostly ok except for a few scenes with the youngest daughter doing her impression of a block of wood. But a good quarter, maybe more, of the film is literally just the mother telling her son not to do something and him ignoring her. It got real old, real fast. The Woman does cut an imposing figure, but this is a PG-13 film, so there’s not much horror to be had. It’s mostly a psychological drama with some supernatural elements.

SPOILERS INCOMING (and trigger warning: suicide)

I had guessed at the beginning of the film that the mother was the woman, at least part of the time. Having her be an extension of the mother’s grief could have been a good idea in the hands of a better filmmaker. And I wasn’t a fan of the end. Now I’ve seen other people say that because the painting was so big and the backwards writing was so small that she didn’t kill herself, but the grief is still there, just under control. But most people, myself included, think that she did pull that trigger and this is either heaven or her mind just before she dies. Which is HORRIBLE. As someone who’s had severe depression and suicidal thoughts, this movie is borderline irresponsible in saying that her happy ending was at the end of a gun. The suicide prevention blurb at the end of the film was not enough to undo that.

So do I recommend it? Meh, not really, unless you’re a Blumhouse completionist. It gets a very mid 5/10 from me.

M.

This film is streaming on Amazon Prime.