The Woman in the Yard, Opening in Brazil

Garden gnomes will not look like such eye-sores after a day of staring at her. Unfortunately, there is nothing kitschy about the veiled woman regally sitting in her chair, who appeared in front of Ramona’s house one morning. Ominously, she seems to get closer and closer without visibly moving. Understandably, she quite alarms Ramona’s two children, especially since the grieving widow might have a pretty good notion as to why she is there—and it isn’t good. Regardless, the figure in black won’t be leaving anytime soon in Jaume Collet-Serra’s Blumhouse produced The Woman in the Yard, which opens in its final major international market, Brazil (or rather Brasil), this Thursday.

Ramona has not been coping well with  her husband David’s death, for especially painful reasons that will be revealed later, but astute viewers will have already guessed. Arguably, her teen son Tay (for Taylor) has largely been taking care of her and his little sister Annie, but inconveniently, that did not include paying the electric bill. With the power out, neither he nor his mother can recharge their phones, so the family finds themselves stuck in their isolated fixer-upper farmhouse, to face the woman alone.

For a while, she just gives cryptic, but spooky and vaguely threatening answers to Ramona’s questions. However, around late afternoon, she “reaching into” the house through the sunlight, to torment the family in a more “hands on” manner.

In fact, the first two acts are quite effective at establishing the atmosphere of mystery and dread. Collet-Serra and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski literally just filmed shadowy woman sitting on a chair, but they make her truly scary. Even though she remains chairbound nearly the entire film, Okwui Okpokwasili also hits the perfect note of eerie but hard-to-pin-down supernatural menace.

Yet, to the film’s great detriment, the ending has been widely considered both a considerable disappointment and highly divisive—with justifiable reason. Frankly, it is easy to imagine Sam Stefanak’s screenplay originally had a darker, edgier conclusion that was toned down with meat cleaver edits. As it currently stands (or rather sits), the film ends quite abruptly, leaving the audience with [perhaps unintended] unresolved ambiguities.

Nevertheless, Peyton Jackson is terrific as the teenaged Tay. He really shows future star potential throughout the film. Russell Hornsby also makes a strong, even haunting (so to speak) impression in his flashback appearances as David. Young Estella Kahiha is also quite good as little Annie, especially in terms of her chemistry with Jackson. Danielle Deadwyler has some impressive freakouts as Ramona, but she struggles to sell the bereft woman’s poor decision-making and even worse parenting and communication skills.

Still, the lowkey approach of the first two acts works surprisingly well. The premise might sound questionable: woman sits it chair, causing great fear. Yet, Collt-Serra, Pogorzelski, and Okpokwasili largely pull it off. For some reason, horror movies tend to open much later in Brazil. You wouldn’t exactly say this one was “worth the wait,” but it should exceed many genre fans expectations, nonetheless. Recommended for fans of moody, atmospheric horror in the Shirley Jackson vibe, The Woman in the Yard opens this Thursday (5/8) in Brazil.