The Woman In The Yard (2025)

 

**This post contains spoilers**

The Story- After surviving a car accident, an injured Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) lives on a farm with her son, Taylor (Peyton Jackson), her daughter, Annie (Estella Kahiha), and the family dog, Charlie. One day, a mysterious woman (Okwui Okpokwasili), dressed in all black, randomly appears in the front yard. 

The Woman refuses to leave, leading Ramona to two troubling questions: Who is The Woman? And what does she want? Ramona is forced to revisit the troubled relationship with her husband, David (Russell Hornsby), while doing her best to protect Taylor and Annie from The Woman. But Ramona’s struggles with her inner demons complicates the chaotic situation. 

My Thoughts- Taylor is a bratty and rebellious teenager. Annie is the young daughter, who needs constant supervision, Ramona can barely move around on crutches, and there’s a creepy and strange woman in the front yard, with ill intentions for Ramona and her family. It’s safe to say Ramona is dealing with a lot.

Danielle Deadwyler delivers a good performance for a complicated character. Is Ramona the perfect parent? No, not even close, but you can see she’s a heartbroken and depressed woman, who’s still trying her best. The weight of dealing with a big loss, while trying to raise two kids, is clearly crushing Ramona. Deadwyler believably conveys Ramona’s emotional struggles, as she’s forced to solely step into the role as the leader of the family.

Okwui Okpokwasili embodies the presence of a grim reaper-esque character. But as the story progresses, there’s a strange shift to The Woman becoming more of a soothing entity for Ramona, because Ramona “called” for her services. The Woman forces Ramona to face some hard truths about herself, playing the role of a facilitator, when Ramona has to make a very tough decision. 

A small part of me has hopes for a sequel. There’s so much you can do with The Woman’s character, a lot of potential, and they barely scratched the surface with her. That, and there’s always room for a new horror icon/villain. 

For a split second, I almost bought into the possibility of Ramona pulling the trigger on David’s rifle. The more I think about it, Ramona coming to her senses, and realizing she shouldn’t kill herself works as a better ending. 

If you strip The Woman In The Yard down to its corse, it’s a movie about battling depression and suicidal thoughts. Ramona was right on the edge. She wanted to do it, because she was slowly drifting to a point, where she gave up on life. The scene in the bedroom, where The Woman is showing Ramona Taylor and Annie’s futures, implying they’ll both go on to lead successful and happy lives without her, hits Ramona hard, when she’s basically at rock bottom. 

Ramona took one look at Annie’s penguin doll, and that was enough to snap her out of it. Remember, Annie gave Ramona her penguin doll, because she didn’t want her mother to be alone, before she left with Taylor to find help. The penguin doll working as an anchor and a reminder as a reason for Ramona to keep going is a nice touch. A simple and ordinary toy drives home a crucial point for the ending: There’s always a reason to live, and someone out there actually cares about you. 

But did it all really happen? Did Ramona start a new and more happier beginning with Taylor and Annie? Here’s where things get kind of murky for The Woman In The Yard. One reoccurring clue that you can point to for knowing Ramona is in the dreamworld comes in the form of a backwards version of the letter R. It’s obvious during the dream sequence with David, when Ramona realizes all the numbers and letters are backwards. 

There’s also a scene, where Ramona berates Annie for writing R backwards on her spelling books. And pay close attention to the old style movie theater marquee during the flashback, where Ramona tells Taylor the truth about David’s death and the car accident, two of the R’s in the title for The Mirror Has Two Faces are backwards. 

So what does it all mean? Was The Woman a physical manifestation of Ramona’s dark thoughts, pushing her towards suicide? Was Ramona stuck inside of her own head? Did she just imagine everything? Another clue appears during the final moments of the movie. One of Ramona’s paintings, a twisted visual of Ramona merged with The Woman, is signed by Ramona, and of course the R is backwards. 

The Woman In The Yard cleanly nails the emotional and dramatic layers throughout the movie. The horror side of TWITY? Eh, that’s another story. I’m always a fan of horror films placed in an isolated setting. Ramona, Annie, and Taylor are basically stuck on this farm in the middle of nowhere. The power is out, no one has a functioning cellphone, the cars don’t work, and Ramona can’t drive. They’re stranded with no help or civilization nearby, so the hopelessness of their dilemma, and that impending sense of doom really kicks in, when The Woman steps past the line for playing mind games. 

But the scare tactics just didn’t work for me. The Woman using her powers to move a wind chime? Throwing around furniture and pots and pans? The Woman’s shadow lurking around the house? A bit too much mainstream horror movie polish for me, and there’s just not enough zing behind the spooky and supposedly terrifying parts of the movie. 

There’s a number of ways you can look at the ending and the home stretch, or how you can interpret everything to draw your own conclusions for what really happened. For me, The Woman In The Yard successfully gets its messages across about suicide, depression, and dealing with death, if you dig through the big calamity after The Woman decides to attack, and that’s what matters in the end. And never underestimate the power of a kid’s plushy penguin doll.

Rating- 6/10