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“Audiences Think They Want Answers, but They Don’t”: Screenwriter Sam Stefanak on The Woman in the Yard
The Woman in the Yard The Woman in the Yard is the latest production from horror factory Blumhouse, but tones down the jump scares in favor of visualizing the dark imaginary of a woman battling depression. It’s not what audiences have come to expect from the studio, and it has garnered wildly divisive reactions from audiences and critics alike. Woman follows single mother Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler), grieving her husband’s death, who is haunted by a female specter in the backyard that is pushing her to self-annihilation. It was a very personal project for first-time screenwriter Sam Stefanak, who was channeling his own demons during the writing process and then had to adapt his words to the specific vision of director Jaume Collet-Serra (returning to horror for the first time since 2009’s Orphan). I spoke with Sam Stefanak about the images that get stuck in his head, going from a Man to a Woman in the yard and when you need to let your own story go in favor of your main character’s.
Filmmaker: How did you come up with the original conception and framework for what became The Woman in the Yard?
Sam Stefanak: For years I had this image in my head of a stranger sitting in a chair outside a window, staring at a house in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t really know what to do with it—I didn’t know what it meant, who that person was. So, that image just sort of sat there. I was writing comedy; I was in a bunch of Netflix rooms, I thought I was a comedy writer. Whatever this image was, I knew it was something sinister. I could feel that. And I think it’s worth mentioning that it was a man in a chair wearing a big, wide brim hat. I guess I was imagining Reverend Kane, the villain from Poltergeist 2, to be quite honest.
Years passed. I started writing comedy. I found some success doing that. Then, in 2020, when a global pandemic happened, I had all this free time and was feeling very depressed, so I finally decided to dive in. I sat down at my computer, sent a character out into this yard that I was imagining and had this character ask me the questions [about themself] that I was wondering: “Who are you? Why are you here? What can I do to make you go away?” I had this character answer honestly, and in no time, I had this cool scene between a woman and this man I named the Man in the Yard, because I didn’t know what to name him [laughs]. I wrote the rest of the story organically, without any outlining or idea where it was going to go, still unaware of what the point of this all was. I got to a certain point when I knew I needed to have a motivation for my villain [laughs]. That’s when it hit me that I was seeing this image because my brain was taking my suicidal depression and giving it a character to embody as a way to deal with my depression. Because, as you can tell, I am a man, so my depression would look like a man.
Once I sold the script and we got into development, it was brought up that Ramona is a woman, therefore her depression would look like her. So, that was a big shift in the story. It changed a lot of the underlying story of this new patriarch coming to fill the void; it became a story about dueling mothers instead. So in a way, my story went away and Ramona’s story took shape. I think that was a good lesson for a first-time screenwriter. I’d never written a feature before, and it’s worth remembering that your story can only get you so far. Once you get to a certain point and you’re working with producers and directors and actors, you have to put your story on the back burner and make it the main character’s story. Everybody involved in The Woman in the Yard brought a lot of their lived experiences with the subject matter, as people do when they collaborate, and we ended up with a product of so many different people’s experiences with depression, with mental health. All those people really helped breathe authenticity into the story that that made it to screen. The Man in the Yard was my story. The Woman in the Yard is Ramona’s.
Filmmaker: So, when you were first writing your Man in the Yard script, you hadn’t outlined where it was going to go. You were trying to work through the image and finding your way.
Stefanak: Absolutely, yeah. I find that’s the best way to write, especially horror. A lot of the horror scripts I’ve written, you get to live in the awful uncertainty with the character and enjoy that horrible “what is going on here”-ness of it all. That works well for the horror genre: Why is this happening to me? Why am I the only one experiencing this thing? In The Woman in the Yard, that experience is seen in the second act, when Ramona isn’t sure how to handle this villain at her door. She’s putting her family through chaos by not addressing it properly. So, that first draft was really therapeutic as an exercise in not only dealing with my inner demons, but also just learning how to creatively write a horror feature.
Once it sold, and we started working with filmmakers, you have to go back and structure things a little bit better [laughs]. Everybody at Blumhouse was very kind and helping me learn how to do that, then the script sat on the shelf for a while. I had moved on to other things, then Jaume Collet-Serra came aboard, January of 2024, with a very specific vision. During our first meeting, he saw a very distinct path forward that required a lot of changes. He leaned way more into the psychological, surreal thriller aspect of it all, when the original draft was a little more grounded—a little more action-thriller, a little more home invasion. The version you’re seeing on the screen is a story I wrote executed with Jaume’s very specific vision.
Filmmaker: Was it The Man in the Yard script that was selected to be on The Black List?
Stefanak: Yeah.
Filmmaker: How would you describe the change in tone in the script when Blumhouse requested the change from Man to Woman in the Yard?
Stefanak: Basically, it’s the same. It’s relatively the same underlying theme of depression, and the Man in the Yard does represent the same supernatural threat and is brought there by Ramona, praying for the strength to end it. That was all the same. But the first half of the story was more of a grounded threat. This is a strange man; there was no supernatural element for quite some time until he got into the house again. It’s fun to see all these different versions of the story when I watched the movie; it’s like seeing different versions of a daydream all at once, but that’s the fun of working with different creative people. There are elements in there that I’d never even thought of.
Filmmaker: Yeah, like how they incorporated Danielle Deadwyler’s own artwork in the film.
Stefanak: She’s so talented. Her guidance really made who Ramona became. I feel very fortunate that she got to breathe a lot of her lived experience into the movie.
Filmmaker: So, when you originally finished the script and went on The Black List, that means it wasn’t picked up that year. From that point, did it go to Blumhouse? What was the journey?
Stefanak: Blumhouse showed some interest before it got on the Black List, then it got on and Blumhouse officially signed on. For a first-time screenwriter, it was getting thrown into the fire in a good way. Again, I had never written a feature before. I had only written comedy, and here I was working with Blumhouse—what a dream, but also very challenging to learn how to maneuver all these things. I used to joke, “I’ll be fine with whatever note I get, as long as there’s still a man and a yard.” And then that changed! Somebody gave the note, “It should be a woman.” That was challenging at first, to say goodbye to the villain that represented my own suicidal depression. I almost felt like I had gotten power over him by writing his demise and, by removing him, I felt like I was giving him that power back. But this was all part of the process: Your story can get you so far, and then it needs to become something else.
Filmmaker: How many packages were put together that you thought were going to be moving forward?
Stefanak: We had two other filmmakers attached at different points, a handful of other different leads. I learned pretty early that the biggest hurdle to making a movie is just scheduling. Every once in a while they’d check in and say, “Hey, we have interest from this filmmaker and actor,” and we would do a little bit more work on the script. We would try to make it work and get so close, and then—I don’t know if you remember the strike that happened [laughs]. [It was] this constant battle to get to the finish line. I moved on to other projects and had forgotten that this could still go the distance, and then January of last year Jaume came aboard.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest changes between the Jaume version and the Blumhouse draft? You say he focused on the psychological dimension. Did he add the elements where the house is visualized as the interior of her mind?
Stefanak: Exactly. He wanted people to walk away thinking that was all in her mind. The darkest elements of anybody’s mind are in the attic, right? So, he was helping to view the story from that lens. And there were other things and setpieces that were originally in the story, other characters that got removed in an effort to focus on our main character.
Filmmaker: Were the neighbors speaking characters originally?
Stefanak: Yeah, I had this character show up to try to save their neighbor, who then gets killed slasher style. It isn’t that movie now.
Filmmaker: There is not a lot of violence in the version on the screen.
Stefanak: Yeah, that’s Jaume’s doing. He didn’t want it to go that route. The original version had a little bit more death and blood, a monster movie sort of feel. But he knew that this version shouldn’t be that, and I think he’s right.
Filmmaker: Did you ever sense any friction between Blumhouse and Jaume over that?
Stefanak: No, no pushback at all to my knowledge. I give a lot of credit to Blumhouse for allowing filmmakers to make films. That’s the impression I got, that they let somebody that they trust do what they see.
Filmmaker: And do you remember at what point Danielle got involved? I see she has an executive producer credit as well.
Stefanak: Danielle helped guide that creativity before Jaume came aboard, and that was beneficial to the story too. I think you can tell that while the movie is a cast of all Black actors, I am the pastiest ginger of all time. That was something that everybody was aware of, and we wanted to make sure that it was an authentic story. The producers and Danielle have experience living as mothers, as Black women, as people in in the middle of nowhere. I’m none of these things, and everybody was able to share those lived experiences together with the group in order to make sure that that was on the page. It was very cool to let the Zoom sessions about the script become a little bit therapeutic. That was very rewarding, to see that the story could be that icebreaker for people, so that they can talk about issues that were plaguing them. While somebody might not deal with suicidal depression, everybody deals with some issue that shows up at their door from time to time: anxiety, PTSD, trauma, any possible disorder.
Filmmaker: I think it’s elegantly handled, but the film has received some strongly negative reactions from reviewers in how it handles the theme of trauma. Have you seen those reactions?
Stefanak: It’s very tough subject matter for people, not only to talk about but be forced to watch. I could understand people not liking its portrayal, because it’s in your face, doesn’t hold back and there’s little subtext. By the end, it’s not hard to understand what the story is about. On some level, I think it’s very cool. It’s been rewarding to know that while some people might hate it, some love it. Who could ask for anything better than getting a reaction? Jaume knew what he was doing. He told me beforehand, “This might be a little polarizing for people because of the subject matter.”
Filmmaker: [SPOILERS FOLLOW] The ending is very ambiguous and leaves the audience hanging. I’ve gotten into some serious discussions about it.
Stefanak: Jaume wanted that uncomfortable ambiguity to be present in the ending, and it has been really interesting to see. Two people in the same exact screening, sitting right next to each other, can come away with their own interpretation, and that is important for this story. My original drafts, I’ll admit, are not as ambiguous; they are very clear about overcoming depression and your mental health struggles. This version, to his credit, gives people either that frustration or joy. I do have my opinion on what happened—not that it’s correct or anything, but when I see the finished product, I find hope. I see somebody overcoming their depression, because that’s what happened to me when I was dealing with suicidal depression: I got ahold of it and made the first draft of the script. That was my painting. So, seeing that completed art piece, I know that Ramona did the same, because that’s my experience as well. Any creative person can see those breadcrumbs to say, “She got her strength back, and she used it for inspiration.” Because that’s how I’ve operated whenever I’ve been depressed. That was my interpretation. What did you think?
Filmmaker: I thought it was an in-between conclusion—that she is still struggling and inside her own head. That’s where I landed.
Stefanak: I think it’s fair to say that some elements of the ending can be interpreted as symbolic. To Jaume’s credit, he gave enough breadcrumbs to every side people wanted to feel. At one point, I did try to encourage [Jaume] to make it a little less ambiguous, and he was like, “No, I think we want to make our audience frustrated. We want to make our audience argue. Audiences think they want answers, but they don’t. They want more questions.”
Filmmaker: I was really struck by Ramona’s backstory and the difficulties of motherhood and loss of identity that comes with pushing your work to the side. I wonder how much of that came from Danielle or Jaume.
Stefanak: That’s them. Originally Ramona was plagued by her decision to drink and drive. That was my story, because I have struggled with alcoholism, so I was pulling from that guilt. It became something else that she’s been dealing with, the frustration of depression for a long time, and that she’s an artist who struggled to find the right place to live. This version of her, as someone who struggled with depression for a long time, was Danielle, that was Jaume, that was producer Stephanie Allain, who was very involved in the current version.
Filmmaker: There’s these Barbra Streisand references that Adam Nayman noted in his Sight & Sound review. They’re outside of the movie marquee with The Mirror Has Two Faces on there. And then there’s the “dark corners of your mind” line that sounds like a takeoff of “The Way We Were.”
Stefanak: That’s all new to me. That was Jaume, to my knowledge.
Filmmaker: He’s a Babs fan. He read the autobiography.
Stefanak: I got to experience a lot of the little details and additions in the movie for the first time when I saw the cut of the movie. There’s a lot of shadows behind Ramona when she’s angry that are in the shape the woman in the yard, a handful of scary reflections and mirrors of Ramona that are very subtly used making a different expression. I knew nothing about this, so I found that very effective on a subconscious level.
Filmmaker: So, after this process, have you continued to write horror, or did you decide to return to comedy?
Stefanak: Once I wrote Man in the Yard, I realized not only how creatively fun it could be, but how therapeutic it was. So, I was like, “What else am I scared of? What else am dealing with?” Thankfully, there’s quite a bit. I’ve written at least a dozen more features since then, and some have gotten set up at different places with different producers and have different talent attached. Now it’s the game of getting them across the finish line. But the lessons from Woman in the Yard are so helpful in remembering that my story can get me so far, but you need to make it the main character’s story: put your ego aside, make a more universal story and pull from other people’s lived experiences.
