Already this year, the 2025 movie calendar has treated us to some great offerings in the horror genre, and Jaume Collet-Serra is hoping his new project will be the next crowd-pleaser. Collet-Serra directed 2024’s Carry-On (available to stream with a Netflix subscription), and now he’s back with a different kind of stressful experience. The Woman in the Yard is a psychological horror that hit theaters March 28, so let’s see what critics have to say.
The film stars Danielle Deadwyler as Ramona, who was badly injured in a car wreck that killed her husband David (Russell Hornsby). Now she’s raising their two children alone in a rural farmhouse, when a woman shrouded in all black (Okwui Okpokwasili) appears in her yard with an ominous message. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman says the movie fails to impress, as it is a haunted-house movie with no tricks up its sleeve. He writes:
The director, Jaume Collet-Serra, doesn’t raise your fear pulse by so much as two heartbeats, and Sam Stefanak’s script is just a minimalist gloss on The Shining. We’re stuck in that house, with nothing but a family of three digging through their cliché troubles. Danielle Deadwyler is, of course, a major actor, but here, playing a character trapped in her miserablism, there’s no variation to her performance. The Woman in the Yard never musters the imagination to horrify or even jolt you. It’s a tale of one-note inner demons.
Siddhant Adlakha of Mashable calls the upcoming scary movie “a baffling mix of horror ideas,” as The Woman in the Yard begins as a streamlined concept but soon bloats into a half-dozen different movies that build to a “distasteful finale.” Adlakha continues:
The Woman in the Yard causes significant narrative whiplash with each question it answers, though none of its conclusions are satisfying. As soon as it establishes the mechanics of its ghostly villain — for instance, the way she uses and moves through shadows — there’s some other power lurking around the corner, resulting in a random string of chase scenes where tension can’t possibly be established, because neither the family nor the audience have any idea what they’re up against.
Tim Robey of the Telegraph rates the movie 2 stars out of 5, saying Danielle Deadwyler is a great actress and deserving of better material. The Woman in the Yard ultimately isn’t worth leaving the house for, Robey says, writing:
The film leans heavily on the nervy gravitas of its leading lady, and just as much on the flashy editing and VFX showmanship of the prolific director, Jaume Collet-Serra. He can lay on industry-standard jump scares, get the sound designers to goose us, and weave in some cool shadow-play that certainly manages to get noticed in the absence of any real plot. But there’s little here to keep us up at night – or from forgetting all about it by tomorrow.
Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting gives the movie 1.5 out of 5 skulls, saying despite Jaume Collet-Serra’s resume of suspenseful films, The Woman in the Yard lacks tension and scares. The plot is content to retread the overly tired grief horror blueprint, Navarro says:
The film’s trailer and title practically sum up the entire movie; a mysterious figure arrives and sits there as a fractured family spirals with an ineffective, unscary nudge here or there. There’s no attempt at atmosphere or tension, with Collet-Serra opting to dwell on the psychological and broach delicate subject matter with cautious hesitation. It makes the sparse and heavy-handed retread of The Babadook all the more noticeable and frustrating. The Woman in Yard doesn’t deviate from its well-trodden path but doesn’t offer enough for audiences to grab ahold of, either. It’s unsure of itself in a way that dooms it from the start, making for an inert feature that somehow stretches its 85-minute runtime to an eternity.
Helen O’Hara of Empire, meanwhile, rates the movie a more generous 3 out of 5 stars, noting the strong performances in The Woman in the Yard — one of Blumhouse’s 2025 horror offerings — and acknowledging it as the rare horror movie to manage scares in broad daylight. Ultimately, though, O’Hara says the same idea has been done better by other movies. The critic says:
Collet-Serra knows his stuff, so the jump-scares are doled out sparingly but effectively, and the always reliable Deadwyler leans into a character who is uncompromising and often plain wrong. Despite that, the storytelling in the last act feels rushed, with overarching concepts introduced without explanation and played out to confusing effect, and that blunts the final impact of its message.
It doesn’t seem like this one stacks up to some of the other best horror movies out there, but there was plenty of praise for the performances. If you’re intrigued by the concept or a fan of the director’s past work, you can catch The Woman in the Yard in theaters now.