The Woman in the Yard

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, The Woman in the Yard follows a small family (Danielle Deadwyler’s Ramona, Peyton Jackson’s Taylor, and Estella Kahiha’s Annie) as they’re tormented by Okwui Okpokwasili’s title figure. It’s workable subject matter that’s employed to progressively unwatchable (and flat-out intolerable) effect by Collet-Serra, as the filmmaker, armed with a script by Sam Stefanak, delivers an often astonishingly deliberate endeavor that gets off to a decidedly lackluster start – with the uneventful, slow-as-molasses opening stretch compounded by a hopeless lack of compelling characters. (Deadwyler’s one-note turn as the perpetually angry Ramona is, to put it mildly, awfully grating.) The eventual inclusion of misguided and far-from-creepy horror-movie elements does little to allay the aggressively tiresome atmosphere, while the inevitable reveal of the central antagonist’s motives is nothing short of laughable and ridiculous (ie it’s just so pretentious and stupid) – which does, in the end, cement The Woman in the Yard‘s place as an absolutely worthless misfire that wouldn’t even have worked as a five-minute short.

no stars out of ****