Jaume Collet-Serra Horror is puzzling


Jordan Peeles triumphant “USA” causes the hairpin to turn from family drama to supernatural nightmare when a young boy tells his parents, “There is a family in our driveway.

As the urgent incident for a slippery, psychology -driven horror movie, it drops the word choice of danger. “Family.” Immediately we know that they are not any ordinary visitors who will call Peele film. They are organized and bound – willing to do anything to ensure their Survival as a team. That line with dialogue and even the title, ”Us“The very nature of the threat that made the film and these villains work so well.

Led by Jaume Collet-SerraThe woman in the yard“Is instead a mediocre Blumhus Joint who tries the same strategy to no avail. It’s a disappointment from the guy who gave us the twisted “Orphan” but about what you can expect from the guy who was also behind “Black Adam” and “The commuter.” When the widow Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) discovers a mysterious figure on the front lawn in her countryside ggeorgi, says her oldest son, Taylor (Peyton Jackson), the obvious: “Says:” Says: “There is a woman in the yard. ”

Home invasion rooms do not become much more pedestrian than that, and even draped in a black casing, the titular “woman” is not much scary than your average tarot card reader. Still, she is the most important attraction and, fresh of “Agatha all the time”, the witch Okwui Okpokwasili gives a magnetic performance that would work significantly better in a frightening imagination or adventure movie. Instead, the actress struggles infinitely dead air in this sloppy metaphor for the sorrow-the supernaturally wrong fire that is embarrassed with coarse gags and jumping that is uncomfortable but rarely compelling.

Danielle Deadwyler in 'The Woman in the Yard'
Danielle Deadwyler in ‘The Woman in the Yard’© Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

Sam Stefanak’s confusing script does not put the woman or her victim of success, sticking Ramona with a broken leg, a contradictory reason that she cannot call the police and a tragic backstory about losing her husband (Russell Hornsby) to a car accident weeks before. The only place is presented as a claustrophobic torture chamber, but much of the film looks and feels like another family’s crap afternoon. Protective Taylor and her youngest, Annie (Estella Kahiha), from their unwelcome visitors, the motionless mother to two attempts who interrogate the woman at first. There is a nursing home nearby. Maybe she – “”How did I get here?

Said behind a veil of moldy black velvet (a costume choice that has been made to death and still has not worked once), The woman’s first line is better than the one that constitutes her arrival. It also has the key to unlocking her true identity and the underlying evil that this film’s God-Awful title does not tell. The severe with plot holes and stuck in a variety of unnecessary flashbacks, that solution is neither sensible nor entertaining and, if nothing else, recommends skipping the theaters to walk by the grass.

The woman in the yard, okwui okpokwasili, 2025. © Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection
Okwui Okpokwasili in ‘The Woman in the Yard’© Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

Upcoming an overworked spin on something like “The Babadook” with the kind of bland nonsense genre fans should expect from a Blumhouse girl in March, “The Woman in the Yard” is effective a cinematic garage sales that strikes parts from better movies. There is a body horror that is ripped directly from “Black Swan” and of course a filled animal with a lot of personality for where would we be without one of them? Save for a sweet joke about Doritos, this family is not smart, funny or interesting – nor anything or someone who happens to them.

Collet-Serra, which soaks its film in an atypical amount of sunlight, forces Collet-Serra the generally strong work of kinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski to boring monotony. (It is a fun rate change that Blumhouse movies today look more maize yellow than the characteristic shiny gray, but I lose.) At the same time, Deadwyler spins in circles that try to evoke any reasonable motivation that explains Ramona locks the doors and … just sit down (???) as her family’s main defense strategy.

Peyton Jackson, Estella Kahihi and Danielle Deadwyler in 'The Woman in the Yard' '
Peyton Jackson, Estella Kahihi and Danielle Deadwyler in ‘The Woman in the Yard’ ‘© Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

By picking through the right terrified, “The Woman in the Yard” has one or two original hidden gems that will be worth looking at certain crowds. When the sun is finally going down, shadows take its own mind and, spoiler alert, the woman defies every expectation of waste the yard. This is something that many film guests will wish they had done when the credits roll on this remarkably strange use of the public space – a banner new entry in (the noun in a noun) subgenre that no one needs.

Rating: C-

“The Woman in the Yard” is in theaters on Friday March 28.

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