The Chiral Mother: Mirrored Selves in “The Woman in the Yard” (2025)

In organic chemistry, “chiral” is a word used to describe a specific kind of reflection or mirroring. Chiral objects or images cannot be superimposed. If they are, they are revealed to have different forms, as in the case if one were to transpose the image of a right hand over the image of a left hand. If a pair of hands were superimposed, one thumb would extend out to the left while the other thumb would extend to the right. Chiral objects have two distinct forms - as in the case of hands, the right is separate from the left in shape. If a person could be considered a chiral object, then there would be two distinct versions of that person. In the case of Jaume Collet-Serra’s “The Woman in the Yard,” the character of Ramona is a chiral mother: that is, she has two selves that are presented in the film and that drive its plot. To prove the importance of chirality in this film also requires paying attention to the motif of mirrors. As one watches or rewatches “The Woman in the Yard” critically, one should note the circumstances of when and why we see mirrors. 

The first time a mirror is seen is when Ramona is shown, mid-shot, taking medications in the morning before meeting her children in the kitchen for breakfast. This scene moves quickly so it might seem unimportant, but the lighting in particular is telling here. As Ramona hobbles away from the mirror the camera remains focused on her reflection and we see her shadow move with her. Seemingly embodying a separate entity, one of a person hunched over, Ramona’s shadow in this scene is our first hint that there might be two characters active in this narrative. Her shadow continues to make its impression as Ramona works her way down the stairs. 

Ramona first sees her chiral self, the titular woman, while disassociating to the sound of running water at the sink. We see a preview of the glaring headlights and the windshield wipers from the car accident after the woman’s appearance in the reflection of kitchen cabinet doors. When the Woman is first noticed by the kids Annie remarks that she is scared and that her father would have known what to do in this situation. This prompts Ramona to go outside and speak with the woman, despite her son’s protests. It is what is said between the siblings here where we see the idea of chirality creeping in. Taylor comforts his sister by saying, “I know Mom hasn’t really been Mom, okay? But I’m here. All right?” There are two versions of mom: the one they knew before the accident, and the one they’re now holed up with in the rundown farmhouse. The mom who made sure the bills were paid versus the one who can’t call the power company. 

When Ramona goes to confront the woman it is easy to notice the chirality even in her legs: one is broken, bandaged, the other functional. Viewers who are familiar with “The Woman in the Yard” will know that this isn’t the only time we will hear some of the lines that are exchanged between Ramona and the mysterious woman: these lines will be mirrored later in the film. Repetition is one way mirroring is shown in this film, and it is significant. The woman first asks, “How did I get here?” Then she asks Ramona for her name. She prods, “Ramona what?” The woman says she only asked because she saw the ring on Ramona’s finger. Continuing her interview, the mysterious woman asks, “Is this your home?” When Ramona shares that her husband bought the place as a fixer upper, the woman says, “Looks like he’s still got a lot to fix.” Ramona shifts the subject of conversation back to the woman and whether she needs any help, to which the woman replies that she is fine. Ramona asks the woman if she can kindly get off her property. To which the woman responds, “Ever wish someone else would be strong for once? And instead you could just disappear.” This is when the conversation takes a turn: Ramona decides to lie. She says her husband will be back soon and that the woman should go. “Your husband’s not coming home,” the woman in the yard says knowingly. “Your injured leg, that busted up truck over there…Guess you were lucky. And he was not.” Annie and Taylor emerge from the kitchen door and Annie calls out to her mother interrupting the women. “Your children are such darlings,” the woman says, “ripe enough to eat.” Ramona finally gives the ultimatum: get off my property or I’m calling the police. And then, the famous line: “Today’s the day, Ramona. You called, and I came. Today is the day.”

The next time we see a mirror is the rearview mirror of the Jeep as Ramona hops in and tries to charge her dead phone by starting the car. The woman’s figure is captured in the shot, shown to still be a distance away from the house. After that, the next reflection we see is of Ramona’s face over the distant shot of the woman in the yard once Annie says she thinks the woman has moved closer. This layering, this superimposition, is a huge visual clue to unlocking “The Woman in the Yard.”

A small mirror on the wall in one of the main floor rooms reflects Ramona holding Annie after her outburst about the hump of the “R” going to the right wherein she throws Taylor’s ball in the yard. The second time the camera shows the mirror Ramona is holding a knife and stabs her daughter in the back, but as the camera moves, Ramona is stabbing a pillow. Annie screams from the other room; she has stepped on one of the shards of David’s broken coffee mug, on the floor from an earlier outburst by Ramona. Stabbing Annie seems to come out of nowhere. The film does not drop any hints about the mother holding any hostility towards her daughter. Just as quickly as the act is suggested it turns out to not be real, so it’s natural for audiences to wonder what this scene is about. It is the reflected Ramona, the Ramona in the mirror who does the stabbing, not the real Ramona. This is our first clue that there may be more than one version of Ramona at work in this story. 

While his mother is distracted upstairs with cleaning out and bandaging Annie’s wound, Taylor takes initiative, armed with a fire poker, and goes to check on the status of the Jeep. The unnamed woman is seen on her perch a good distance from the shed and Taylor tries the Jeep without luck. But the next time the hanging laundry moves, the woman is absent from the chair. This cues up the jump scare. Taylor creeps around the barn, checking the windows for the woman when he knocks something over. This causes him to turn and face a mirror in which the woman’s spectral form appears. When he turns fully, he does not see her standing where she should be given the reflection in the mirror, but he gets quickly to the next wall and follows shadowed footsteps, only to find his mother. This is where chiral selves can be seen: the woman in the yard is really another embodiment of Taylor’s mother. 

Taylor eventually confronts the woman in the yard at gunpoint and shockingly reveals that there’s more to the story of his father’s death. When Taylor goes inside, there is a mid-shot of him standing in a mirror in the hall; he tells Annie to go to the other room and her reflection can be seen in the mirror as she listens to her older brother. Taylor’s power struggle comes to a head here, when he asks his mother for the real story about their father’s accident. Here the “real” is separate from the “backward” initial telling. This is when we get the flashback scene to David and Ramona’s date just before the car accident. 

While there are a few ways to argue Ramona’s chirality it is perhaps most interesting to examine an allusion Collet-Serra makes to at least one film. The flashback scene where Ramona and her now-deceased husband David are on a date features the reflection of a movie theater marquee on the passenger’s side of the couple’s car as they leave the restaurant. The title of the film being advertised reads, “The Mirror Has Two,” and one of the letter r’s in the word mirror is faced backwards. By now, this backwards “R” holds some meaning since we’ve seen Ramona yell at her daughter for not writing her “R’s” with the hump to the right, or backwards. Backwards holds significance because it is the word the woman in the yard uses to tell Taylor that his mother’s story of his father’s death was misleading. 

The iPhone Ramona needs to charge to call the power company gives us an idea of when this story may be set, but this marquee seems to suggest that the story comes after the 1996 film “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” Yet upon rewatch, and with an eye for detail, the year 1958 can also be seen on the marquee. This means Collet-Serra is not referencing the 1996 film, but instead its French progenitor. “Le Miroir à deux faces” (1958) may be the basis for Streisand’s so-called remake, but the two have little in common. “Le Miroir à deux faces,” as best as I can piece together, is about a man purposefully marrying a plain looking woman because he believes she will be more faithful to him. His world is upended when, after a car accident, his mousy wife is made beautiful by plastic surgery. Her new look causes unhappiness for the couple; the husband feels betrayed that she had the surgery done without his permission, and he believes that now that his wife is prettier she will cheat on him. Apparently much of the film is spent focusing on the husband’s abuse of the wife post-surgery as he attempts to keep his wife submissive and compliant. Though much of their marriage exists off-screen, this suggests a gripping account of the nature of David and Ramona’s relationship that fuels Collet-Serra’s narrative.

Ramona tells Taylor that his father could tell something was wrong with her that night, that something was on her mind, so she says, “I told him the truth.” The Ramona that sits at the restaurant table has her braided hair pulled into an updo as opposed to the Ramona we’ve seen so far with her braided hair down. This is a kind of transformation in her appearance (albeit not as dramatic as the plastic surgery in “Le Miroir à deux faces”). Ramona says to her husband, “You’re fulfilled in the ways that you want to be fulfilled. I am not. Everything about me is giving over to everybody else. I’m doing stuff for you. I’m doing stuff for the kids. I'm doing stuff for the farm. I’m doing stuff for the fucking chickens.” Since much of David’s character exists off-screen, we cannot know to what degree he may have dictated Ramona’s chores around the farm, however, this does seem to indicate that, like in “Le Miroir à deux faces” Ramona believes she is best when she is living to serve others. Collet-Serra seems to suggest that the disfigured and horror-inducing appearance of the woman in the yard - of Transformed Ramona - also known as Backwards Ramona or Left Ramona - is the downfall of “Right” or “Real” Ramona.

David’s response to Ramona, especially knowing we get so little from his character in the story, is revealing. To which David responds, “We can’t make another shift. We just did that. Which you said you were okay with. Which you said you were happy with. Which you said you were looking forward to doing all–” he stops. He continues: “We can’t just keep moving all the time.” Ramona threatens to leave, he pushes: “This is a ‘we’ decision. Which is now a ‘we’ issue that we have to fix. And we can’t fix it by you going away.” David’s language here shows that the state of their marriage is in need of just as much - if not possibly more - repair than the rundown farmhouse. Moreover, it shows that he envisions their relationship as being the key to solving their problems. This differs for Ramona, who retorts: “Well, maybe it’s not fixable.” Whether it is the unnamed woman speaking to Ramona or the husband and wife arguing in the restaurant, “fixing” is an idea that is seen in more than one context as being unfinished, impossible. Without a fix of some kind, both the house and the relationship are seen as decaying. 

When Ramona is forced to truthfully recount the night of the accident she says to son Taylor that, “We had this vision of a perfect life. And I just…I just couldn’t live it.” So perfect seems to be working against reality, the dreams of what could be opposing what is. Collet-Serra equates David and Ramona’s move from the city to the country with the plastic surgery in “Le Miroir à deux faces.” It is the source of tension between the couple. It was the turning point in David and Ramona’s relationship. This can even be seen in the meaningful exchange between Annie and Ramona when the mother is tending the daughter’s wound. Annie asks her mother whether they will continue to live in the farmhouse now that “Daddy is dead.” On first watch, this conversation suggests that her daughter might believe that Ramona sees herself trapped in this “fixer upper” without the possibility of further fixing. On an additional watch this interaction shows how Annie may have seen that her mother didn’t want this farm from the very beginning. 

“The Woman in the Yard” has refrains: the David dream sequence sandwiches the film’s story appearing at the opening of the film and at the end of the film, and also towards the end when Ramona enters the Backwards place. The repetition of the dream shows its significance to the characters and overall plot, but it also only shows what David wants. From David’s perspective Ramona wasn’t happy living in the city so her dissatisfaction seems to come not from the move but from somewhere within herself.  We can say there is a Backward or Left Ramona and a Right or Real Ramona but we also see a dichotomy present in City and Farm Ramona. 

If you’re still in doubt that “The Woman in the Yard” centers on chirality, let’s next examine the use of lighting during the climactic confrontation of characters in the attic. This scene is a masterclass in how to use front lighting effectively, as the unnamed woman’s shadow, or Okpokwasili’s shadow, differs from Ramona’s (Deadwyler’s). The woman in the yard manipulates shadows around the main floor of the house and chases the family of three up to the attic. Taylor grabs one of his mother’s old paintings to cover the windows so no light can come in. Hearing a creak from the other side of the attic, Ramona and Taylor turn their attention to what in low key lighting appears to be the outline of the unnamed woman. Taylor remembers his flashlight and just before he turns it on the audience again sees the disfigured face from the car crash scene, this time seemingly closer than before.

Taylor turns the flashlight from the iron wrought chair that the woman perches in, and then to the wall beside his mother and sister and the spectral, disfigured face appears again. The woman knocks the flashlight out of Taylor’s hands and it falls to the floor. Ramona hands Annie off to her brother in the confusion. As they try to find safety in the attic and as Ramona searches for any semblance of a weapon, the flashlight spins wildly on the floor throwing light in disparate patches. There is a struggle between Ramona and the woman. Taylor hides Annie in a corner and attempts to help his mother but is thrown away from the action. A brave Annie runs out to the middle of the attic floor when the flashlight stops spinning and takes it with her to her hiding spot. 

This is when the disfigured face is fully revealed and the woman formerly of the yard now of the attic calls to Annie in a singsong voice. The camera pulls away from the closeups and shows a full shot of the attic so we can see the distance between the woman and Annie. Ramona is nowhere in sight. As the woman nears Annie she says, “It’s me, baby. Don’t be scared.” Taylor looks to the far wall and sees the shadow of his mother flailing. To be clear, this is Deadwyler’s shadow behind Okpokwasili. This shadow continues behind the Woman as she closes in on Annie. The unnamed woman finally reaches Annie and comforts her before she and Annie both seemingly disappear. Taylor collects himself and Ramona hobbles toward her son, whom she embraces. Annie then calls to her mother and the flashlight has suddenly been moved to the main part of the house, downstairs. 

Ramona opens the once barricaded attic door and she, with Taylor, begins the descent. The flashlight continues flickering from what appears to be the study and Annie’s voice seems to be calling from the safe where Taylor took his father’s gun earlier. The safe has turned into some sort of nightmare Narnia, seemingly transporting Ramona to her daughter. When Ramona gets to the end of the hall she walks out of a full-length mirror hanging in the master bedroom, and David is still very much alive and in bed. Narratively, we’ve caught up to the beginning of the film as David recounts the dream of the finished house. Ramona gets in the bed and holds her husband close until she notices that the tattoo on David’s arm is backwards. Groping her way out of the bed, Ramona notices a poster on the wall bearing her name, but again, the image is backwards. She looks to the bedside clock and notices it is also backwards. You may have heard of the Upside Down, but this is the Backwards dimension. 

Backwards David then takes a sheet over her head and seemingly tries to suffocate her. There is a shot of blackness and then an extreme closeup of Ramona’s face under the woman in the yard’s long veil. This is where things get really weird: the earlier version of Ramona comes out of the house to talk to the woman. This time it’s Ramona asking how she got there. Rather than Okwui Okpokwasili’s character, we see instead Danielle Deadwyler beneath the veil. An inversion. What if this inversion is meant to tell us that Right Ramona has become Left Ramona? What if this film had two death scenes: one when Backwards David suffocates Ramona, the other when the chiral selves transpose? Ramona, who has become the woman from the yard, says that she is drowning and appears to be suffocating under the black veil in the same way that she seemed to be suffocating when Backwards David threw the sheet over her head. (During the date scene flashback the word suffocating is used by David as he recounts Ramona’s unhappiness even in the city, so suffocation seems to be a motif.) The earlier version of herself, the other Ramona, is now the one to say, “Today’s the day. Today is the day. Today is the day, Ramona!” Today is the day of superimposition - when the two selves must reconcile. 

With the veil now off of her head, Ramona appears to move through time and space out of the yard and into the attic. She is now seated in the iron wrought chair in the attic, looking at her children and herself. Ramona becomes the woman from the yard, saying Annie’s name and telling her not to be scared, that she has come to take Annie home. The shadow we associated with Okpokwasili’s character is seen behind Ramona, an inversion of the first time the audience saw this scene when Taylor looked to the far wall and saw his mother’s shadow. This time, once Ramona touches Annie things move very quickly: there’s a callback to the earlier scene where, in the mirror, Ramona appeared to have stabbed Annie but instead it was just a pillow. We land with Annie in her mother’s arms, Ramona frantically trying to wake her up. At first it’s unclear whether Ramona really did hurt Annie as she thinks back to the blood that was on her hands when she became the woman. Through the use of shots that utilize a mirror, we are transported from the attic to the safe to what appears to be Annie’s bedroom. This is when we get the final standoff. Ramona sends Tay and Annie away while she faces the woman from the yard - or the showdown between Left Ramona (Okpokwasili) and Right Ramona (Deadwyler).

The confrontation between Okpokwasili’s Ramona and Deadwyler’s Ramona is revealing. Okpokwasili says, “I am the corners of your mind. The scary parts.” Then the refrain, “Today’s the day.” Okpokwasili’s Ramona knows that while two men enter only one can leave. Deadwyler has the gun right at Okpokwasili’s chest and then slowly she lowers the gun. Likely what Left Ramona said is sinking in: “They’ve needed their mother for weeks. But you’ve been locked away in here.” Deadwyler asks, “My kids…will they be okay?” Using David’s lighter, Okpokwasili changes the photos of young Annie and Taylor into portraits of the future and says, “Only if you set them free.” Okpokwasili’s Ramona says that Deadwyler’s Ramona has called on her every day - not asking for the will to go on, but to avoid putting the one remaining bullet to use. This battle of wills between Left Ramona and Right Ramona leads to the melancholic scene where it is presumed Ramona takes her own life. Seen in the shadows on the wall, Left Ramona becomes one with Right Ramona. It is this visual superimposition that best depicts the chirality, and with the superimposition comes the death of a Ramona. 

Yet Collet-Serra chooses not to have the gun shot be audible. There is just the stillness and quiet of the countryside, wind blowing through the laundry on the line. Ramona - that is, Deadwyler - emerges from within the house to find Taylor and Annie returning home. Taylor and Annie embrace their mother on the front lawn and she says, “I changed the…the scary parts.” Taylor then asks if the woman in the yard will come back. Ramona says, “Not today. But if she does, we’ll be ready. I’ll be ready.” So it would seem – again, lacking the actual sound of the gun firing – that Ramona has emerged victorious over the Woman. As the camera moves outward, away from the reunited family we see the farm now has a sign that reads “Iris Haven.” (Ramona’s insistence that not every farm needs a name comes to represent the unnamed version of her, the woman in the yard.) As they reach the porch the power miraculously turns back on and Charlie, the dog, returns. The camera continues to pan away from the front door and to an open window, where one of Ramona’s paintings can be seen on an easel. The camera moves in for an extreme closeup of the face of a woman that Ramona has painted and then continues moving down the painting until we come to the artist’s signature. Ramona’s name appears backwards.  

The backwards trappings of the room Ramona enters when looking for Annie in the Narnia safe are indicators that Ramona is no longer in reality. The dead husband suddenly alive again, all else askew. So it would seem that the backward signature on the painting would indicate a romanticized or “perfect” ending rather than the real ending. If Okpokwasili’s Ramona represented the scary parts as she said she did and Deadwyler’s Ramona says she changed the scary parts to presumably defeat the Woman, it would figure that Deadwyler used the gun to kill Okpokwasili. Yet we saw the two become one. How could one live and the other survive? And which one of them survives? These are the questions that the backward signature evokes. While there are other lingering questions like just how long the Woman has been influencing Ramona, the key to understanding this film’s ending is to understand chirality: there are two distinct shapes that, when superimposed, leave only one to remain. One Ramona is strong while the other disappears, just as the woman in the yard says in her initial meeting with Ramona.