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In horror, as in most film genres, simplicity is power, and the lean initial premise here is as potent as it gets... The inexorable, creeping chill of this uncanny game of What’s the time, Mr Wolf? dissipates almost entirely, though, during a convoluted third act in which the story ties itself in knots and the audience becomes too baffled to remember to be scared.

“The Woman in the Yard” never quite manages to come together into an effective whole. The script too often feels like a collection of half-baked ideas from M. Night Shyamalan’s reject pile and it all concludes on a note that might have been enormously moving and powerful in a stronger film but which just doesn’t quite come off.

For an hour or so, it’s intriguing; we don’t know where we stand exactly, and there’s an awful lot in the air. It settles shruggingly, however, and some of what is being juggled – Black Mirror-ish psychology, Us-like shadow selves – is revealed as decidedly secondhand.

Much of it looks cool, but the haphazard storytelling quickly becomes a little irritating, not to mention confusing... Still, despite the baffling third act... Danielle Deadwyler, an executive producer on the project, is a real tour-de-force in this, and milks her scenes of desperation and despair for all they are worth.

To her credit, Danielle Deadwyler gives a solid performance as a mother overwhelmed by grief, and newcomers Peyton Jackson and Estella Kahiha help to give some genuine emotion to an otherwise weak production. But there’s not enough here to sustain even a slim sub-90 minute runtime, and Collet-Serra seems lost when tasked with a project that provides little opportunity for dynamic action sequences or wild plot twists.

A raw central performance from Danielle Deadwyler brings some depth to this Blumhouse thriller, which otherwise maintains a creepy atmosphere but mostly trades in familiar psychological horror tropes and an abundance of jump scares.

It's well performed, and Collet-Serra knows his way around a beautifully timed scare, but what's most haunting is the sense that the same idea has been done better before.

Picked through by the right horror obsessives, “The Woman in the Yard” has one or two original hidden gems that will be worth viewing for certain crowds.

The Woman In The Yard is, thankfully, more interested in laying out a relatively straightforward scary story than posturing as a thoughtful investigation of human strife. Though groan-worthy moments involving bootstrap-adjacent mental health practices do crop up toward the tail end, the film quickly establishes its conceit with limited baggage...

The Woman in the Yard isn’t the spooky and gimmicky jump-scare-a-thon suggested by its trailer... What the film actually delivers is a slow-burning tale of very real traumas suffered by a woman far out of her element and forced to process a tragedy on top of it all.

The Woman in the Yard causes significant narrative whiplash with each question it answers, though none of its conclusions are satisfying.

Some genre fans will be disappointed by the film’s slow-burn style and the cryptic nature of Sam Stefanak’s screenplay, including its twist ending that’s open to interpretation. But for anyone more interested in cerebral horror and less in watching arteries gushing and entrails popping out, The Woman in the Yard offers considerable rewards.