\n\tThe range in quality is wide\u2014from Midsommar to the Smile films to the Australian horror renaissance kicked off with Talk to Me to Mike Flanagan\u2019s tearjerking TV terrors\u2014but what generally unites these films is that the characters tend to start off as deeply wounded, haunted by some shame or loss that will become the motivating factor (hidden or not) in their journey towards either redemption or rock-bottom despair. Many horror movies have employed similar kinds of psychological readings, but they were once more anomalous: sure, we\u2019ve had The Seventh Victim (a film about depression, highly unusual for 1940s American cinema) and The Haunting (which stays faithful to its Shirley Jackson source material by delving into the ambiguous emotional impairment of its main characters), but most of our classic horror movies have been about innocents thrust into unimaginable situations: Rosemary\u2019s Baby, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Omen, Poltergeist, Get Out. If The Blair Witch Project were made today, would Heather also be confronting the memory of her abusive father, seen in ponderous flashbacks? Horror has always had \u201cteachable\u201d moments, though they\u2019re more along the lines of \u201cdon\u2019t go into the woods without a compass\u201d or \u201csteer clear of motel showers.\u201d It\u2019s probably no surprise that the ascendance of grief horror\u2014in which characters aren\u2019t simply scrambling to survive but are implicitly trying to overcome something from their past\u2014has coincided with the mainstreaming of the \u201cself-care\u201d industry. How can we trust our disreputable entertainment if it\u2019s not a steppingstone on the way to wellness?\n<\/p>\n
\n\tMoviegoers in general and horror lovers in particular seemed to have overdosed on grief horror by the time Jaume Collet-Serra\u2019s The Woman in the Yard was released last year. Largely dismissed, if not disparaged, the film was something different for its director, an ace genre craftsman whose former descents into horror were classical, hearty, fast-paced, and in the case of Orphan, compellingly unsavory. Collet-Serra\u2019s fans may have been surprised, even disappointed that with Woman in the Yard he preferred to take an emotionally and narratively claustrophobic, character-based approach. The film, with a script that writer Sam Stefanek has called deeply personal, undoubtedly fits more cleanly into this au courant form of grief horror, yet by ignoring it for its alleged 21st-century genre sins, viewers passed on a film with an elegant, pared-down design and a genuinely upsetting interior landscape that, for this viewer at least, was persuasively horrific and, finally, deeply moving.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tMuch of the film\u2019s power comes from Danielle Deadwyler\u2019s fully invested performance as Ramona, the recently widowed mother of a teenage boy, Taylor (Peyton Jackson), and a prepubescent girl, Annie (Estella Kahiha). The three live in a remote farmhouse, which we come to learn Ramona was already feeling isolated and disillusioned in before the car accident that claimed her husband David\u2019s life. Far from civilization and neighbors and, as the film begins, without electricity due to delinquent payments, the family is barely getting by, stumbling over each other with resentment and confusion, while Ramona, her leg still in a cast, hobbles reluctantly through whatever domestic and maternal responsibilities she can manage.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tDeadwyler is a naturally sympathetic, beautifully transparent actor, so watching her descend into apathy is truly alarming; it quickly becomes clear that she\u2019s not merely agonizing over her husband\u2019s death but is severely depressed and hardly functioning. Soon enough, Taylor notices a figure perched on a bench in their front yard facing the house at an ominously polite distance, completely enshrouded in black tatters. The children somehow immediately clock this mystery person as a woman, although it would be impossible to know this due to the distance and the clothing\u2014either an improbability or a psychic trick of the film. In finally gaining the courage to approach this sinister cloaked entity, Ramona asks it to leave their property. Staring back at her, the wraith (played by an excellent, unsettlingly composed Okwui Okpokwasili, her face barely visible behind the muslin veil) calmly states \u201cToday\u2019s the day,\u201d and extends a pair of bloody hands.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIndeed, The Woman in the Yard will take place over the creeping expanse of one day, from sun-dappled, wide-open terror (the first shock cut is to curtains being opened) to the inky darkness of night. Within its circumscribed time frame and single location, Collet-Serra comes up with an array of unforced yet dramatic camera angles and positions that give this tightly enclosed world, shot in effectively destabilizing widescreen, a sense of variation and geometric pleasure. While burdened by the occasional car-crash flashback (done in subjective, slo-mo flourish, par for the course in 21st-century grief horror… The Babadook, Smile 2, even all the way back to The Descent), the limitations imposed by the narrative serve this film well, allowing the viewer to home in on the details and emotional resonances of Stefanek\u2019s script. The fear that the cloaked figure elicits has less to do with \u201chorror imagery\u201d per se than with what it means for the characters. Shrouded and in black, the woman is a classical figure of mourning\u2014in other words, an image of how a widow is \u201csupposed\u201d to behave, to hide herself away like the totaled car that still sits, covered in its own shroud in their yard.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIs the woman a Babadook, a literalization of grief? Or is she more simply, more eerily, a double? (The movie could have been titled Other Mommy.) This sort of mirroring becomes the fulcrum of the film: there\u2019s even a joke about it, with a shot of a movie marquee showing Barbra Streisand\u2019s The Mirror Has Two Faces, and there\u2019s a barely noticeable trick mirror shot early in the film for the eagle-eyed. While such obvious psychological illustration (let\u2019s call it explanatory ambiguity) might have painted other filmmakers into a corner, Collet-Serra\u2019s restraint and Deadwyler\u2019s wrenching dedication create a work of persuasively expressionistic, Southern Gothic-tinged horror.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Woman in the Yard certainly isn\u2019t above citing other horror landmarks. There are The Shining jokes aplenty, from Taylor\u2019s bored bouncing off the walls with a rubber ball, to Annie\u2019s inability to write her R\u2019s facing forward, instantly echoing the backwards \u201cR\u201d in Danny\u2019s RedRum scrawl (another mirror allusion). There\u2019s more than a whiff of Rear Window suspense in watching Ramona, trying to protect herself and her loved ones while housebound and encased in a broken leg. And as the woman moves imperceptibly closer to the house, we may think of M. R. James\u2019s uncanny \u201cThe Mezzotint,\u201d a story of a haunted painting that alters only when you don\u2019t look at it. (It\u2019s a proper reference point, as Ramona is herself a painter\u2014which we\u2019re reminded of in the rather extraordinary final tracking shot.) All of this helps extricate The Woman in the Yard from the recesses of grief horror: I perceived more of an allegiance to the classics here, like Henry James\u2019s doppelg\u00e4nger masterwork \u201cThe Jolly Corner\u201d or any number of Shirley Jackson\u2019s studies of people immobilized by inextricable personal fears. Collet-Serra\u2019s film doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s part of the grief horror trend but rather a prime example of why it made sense in the first place. \u2014Michael Koresky\n<\/p>\n
\n\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/magic-1.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n
\n\tSecond Night:
Magic\n<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile Anthony Hopkins\u2019s immortal Hannibal Lecter will forever be his most iconic \u201cbaddie\u201d role, a silver medal or at least an honorable mention is due to his less-remembered Charles \u201cCorky\u201d Withers, the eventually murderous ventriloquist given to multiple personality disorder and unchecked rage issues from Richard Attenborough\u2019s upsetting 1978 film Magic. \u201cBewilderingly miscast\u201d according to Pauline Kael\u2014who in fairness was justifiably baffled that this angry, sweaty, glowering puppetmaster could be a famous entertainer\u2014Hopkins is, in fact, plumbing bottomless depths of an exaggerated form of the self-hatred and insecurity that plague so many performers and layfolk alike. So profoundly moving in his quietude in films like The Elephant Man, The Remains of the Day, and Armageddon Time, here he is all volatility and latent rage, at his most troubling when he\u2019s trying to be relaxed and charming.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tHopkins has good company in Magic. Screenwriting god William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President\u2019s Men, The Princess Bride) adapted his own novel, and with Attenborough\u2019s elegant touch, the film is much more of a subdued character study (and at times a two- or three-hander) than a showbiz satire. Most of the action takes place far away from any stage, in some isolated Catskills rental cabins. Before it goes upstate, the great cinematographer Victor J. Kemper\u2019s images provide lovely \u201970s New York flavor, including shots of a busy Central Park South outside the old Hotel St. Moritz. Trapping you in Corky\u2019s topsy-turvy headspace, Attenborough frequently presents images that can only be in his imagination, like when he seems to see himself as a child playing catch outside his old home. In the first scene, Corky is falsely describing a triumphant magic show performance to his mentor Merlin, while we see something closer to what really happened, but still run through the prism of Corky\u2019s self-flagellation: onlookers cackling derisively and unanimously hating him. It\u2019s this bombing that prompts Corky to rejigger his act, returning to the stage with an apple-cheeked, bowl-cut, insult-hurling dummy named Fats, which quickly (and, again, somewhat bafflingly) brings him major success.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tCorky\u2019s agent Ben Greene, a name-dropping (Steve Martin, Rich Little), cigar-fellating Burgess Meredith (a recurring delight is to see him shattering the glass caps of his stogie containers) with a horseshoe bald hairline, dangles TV network mega-fame in front of his client. But Corky balks when told he would need to take a physical and aptitude test, knowing it might expose his insanity, so he hoofs it to his upstate Catskills roots. There he plans to look up old crush Peggy (Ann-Margret), whom he finds almost immediately, caretaking some unoccupied cabins and married lovelessly to their other high school alumnus Duke (the always-welcome character actor Ed Lauter). Maybe due to her own pathetic straits, Peggy is charmed by Corky and Fats, even as the former angrily snaps at her, pouring sweat, during a frustrating mental card trick. Peggy also cottons to Fats as he gives voice to his master\u2019s roiling id, cracking remarks like \u201cWow, boobs and brains!\u201d and saying her \u201cboobs belong in the Louvre.\u201d (It\u2019s really mostly \u201cboob\u201d talk.) Goldman\u2019s oft-crude dialogue also applies to Peggy, who says, \u201cI can be a very crappy lady when I put my mind to it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\tBefore long, Corky and Peggy copulate, to the strains of Jerry Goldsmith\u2019s persistent, swelling score, as Fats glowers in the next room. The dummy grows jealous of Corky\u2019s new love interest. Or so it seems, stuck in Corky\u2019s POV as we are; more likely it is Corky\u2019s self-loathing that prevents him from being happy and normal. At one point, Mr. Greene appears at Corky\u2019s cabin with some tempting offers of work, mostly out of concern for his client friend. He gives the clearly unwell Corky one last test: go five minutes without speaking as Fats. The minutes tick away in real time, but the five-minute mark never arrives. It is the film\u2019s best scene.\n<\/p>\n