A Constant Visual Feast

There’s something to be said for not getting everything you want all the time whenever you ask for it, like, say, a good horror movie instead of a dartboard. The Woman in the Yard is the latter: the film aims for the single rings only, hits half of them, and rolls out a narrative with no focus or purpose, not to mention very few effective scares. I have no sense whatsoever of whether or not Jaume Collet-Serra made this project by committee against his desires, but if there’s a 2025 release I’ve seen that appears to have too many fingerprints on it, it’s this one.

But – but! – The Woman in the Yard still made me think, and that’s all I can really hope for of any movie. As I said to a filmmaker in a recent conversation that, fingers crossed, I’ll share with y’all in June, you can learn a lot from a bad film, as I explain in my first piece over at Salon.