The Woman in the Yard review: A baffling mix of horror ideas

Some genre movies grow and transform. Others, like Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Woman in the Yard, metastasize. What begins as streamlined (if slightly unbalanced) modern folk horror soon bloats into a half a dozen different films, heat-welded jankily together as they build to a confoundingly distasteful finale.

Oddly enough, it might have been easier to swallow had it also been visually drab. That The Woman in the Yard looks as good as it does — in service of a uniquely-executed conceit appearing midway through — makes it all the more of a waste. What Collet-Serra does with light and shadow is often marvellous, and could have resulted ...