Ramona is still recouping from the devastating car accident that left her husband, David, dead.
But in a very real sense, Ramona is slightly dead herself. Her heavily stitched together leg is in a thick brace that barely allows her to move. The household bills are piling high. The electricity in their isolated little farmhouse has just been turned off. And she feels as empty and powerless as a woman can feel.
Ramona’s 14-year-old son, Taylor, is doing his best to shoulder the man-of-the-house responsibilities. And six-year-old Annie is bright and precocious. But no matter what the kids do to lighten Ramona’s load, the weight of responsibility grows heavier and heavier.
And it’s nearly crushing Ramona.
Each morning the wounded mom swings her aching, broken leg out of bed and down to the floor, and she prays, “Give me strength.” But she still feels so weak.
This morning, however, something changes.
I mean, Ramona still nearly breaks her neck slipping on the stairs with her crutches. And the dog still barks in the kitchen. And the bills are still stacked on the entryway table.
But today, a woman appears in the yard.
This woman, dressed head to toe in a black veil and funeral garb, just appears out of nowhere. And she sits there on some strange old chair that wasn’t there before.
Ordering her children to remain in the house, Ramona hobbles out to the woman. She calls out. She inquires who the woman is and where she’s from. She asks if the woman needs help.
When Ramona finally gets this strangely veiled person to speak, the woman announces: Today’s the day, Ramona. You called, and I came. She then holds out her hands, covered in blood.
And as Ramona quickly crutches her way back to the house, she wonders why the dog has suddenly fallen silent. She worries over the red smear on the chicken coop. She sweats and strains and stumbles. Her leg hurts so badly.
And Ramona wonders if today … is the day.
It’s evident that both Taylor and Annie love their mom. They each voice concern over how she’s changed since the accident. Taylor also makes it very plain to his younger sister that he’s there for her, no matter what. And he works to keep the household going—making meals and cleaning up. (That said, the teen also gets angry and rebelliously disobeys his mom.)
Ramona loves her kids, too. But she’s weighed down by things that cloud her judgement. Ultimately though, it’s her kids’ love that helps pull her through a very difficult situation.
At first, the Woman appears to be a malevolent, demonic-like entity. It uses its weighty shadow to move things in the yard and garage, smash furniture and other objects in the house and even kill some animals. This seemingly spirit-like thing terrorizes the family, chasing them around the house and appearing in places out of nowhere.
[Spoiler Warning] But in the end of The Woman in the Yard, we realize that this creature is really a manifestation of Ramona’s own deep, emotional distress, representing the very real emotional and physical torment that she herself has unleashed on her kids. In fact, that depressive darkness had plagued Ramona and her family long before the accident that took David’s life.
Ramona wears a midriff-baring tank top. In a memory, she and David embrace in bed (both dressed), and he affectionately kisses her head.
We see flashback memories of the car crash, glass flying in slow motion and two vehicles wrecking. Later, we see the stitched up wound that’s on Ramona’s leg. She pulls back the lightly bloodied bandage and picks long threads and a small piece of bandage out of the goopy wound.
The Woman uses her extending shadows to smash things, drag Annie across the floor and thump the family members around. Taylor retrieves his father’s gun from the family safe and points it at the Woman.
Annie steps on something sharps and slashes her foot open. Ramona has a vision of stabbing Annie in the back with a knife, only to realize that she had impaled a pillow with the blade. The Woman’s shadow levitates a blade threateningly. We see a quick image of dead, bloodied chickens.
The Woman challenges Ramona to consider her daily prayers for strength. “The strength … to do what?” the woman asks. And she whispers to Ramona that her children would be far better off if she would simply “set them free” and kill herself. She guides Ramona to put the gun barrel beneath her chin. (Ramona breaks free, thanks to Annie.)
[Spoiler Warning] But eventually, we come to realize that the Woman never existed. It was Ramona’s mental manifestation of her own dark depression and emotional torments. So all the destruction the Woman unleashed was actually perpetrated by Ramona in real life. In turn, when Taylor turned his father’s gun on the Woman, he was actually pointing it at the physically destructive and emotionally compromised Ramona.
There’s a smattering of crude language in The Woman in the Yard, including one f-word, one s-word and a couple uses each of the words “b—ch” and “d—n.” God’s name is misused once.
Ramona has a large bottle of prescription pain pills. She reaches for the pills but then sets the bottle aside. In a flashback, Ramona and David have glasses of wine at dinner.
When the dog food runs out, Taylor feeds the dog something old from the fridge, which the animal promptly vomits back up. We find out that Ramona has been fabricating stories about the car accident, lying to herself and her kids.
The genres of horror and sci-fi are often used to project someone’s societal fears and angst. You don’t have to witness too many zombie flicks or environmental disaster pics before you realize that, oh yeah, somebody’s trying to say something just beneath the goopy and dystopian surface of things.
So, The Woman in the Yard’s metaphorical turn isn’t necessarily unique. But it does take you by surprise. And it is effective.
I don’t want to spoil things, but this is one of those films that leaves you thinking about objectively scary, real-world things. In that sense, this film has a solid impact.
On the other hand, The Woman in the Yard isn’t an easy film. The first three-fourths of this Twilight Zone-esque movie are stressful and creepy. It flirts with suicide and physical abuse. And until everything clicks together in the conclusion, the evil in the mix feels demonic. (It’s definitely not a film you’d gather the kids for.)
But if adult friends or couples make it to the final chapter of this film, they’re certain to have fuel for discussion about some very real and personal horrors that can occur in life.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
