where the crawdads sing guardian movie review

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Where the Crawdads Sing review – hit novel crashes on the big screen

The Reese Witherspoon-produced adaptation of the best-seller remains faithful to the fantasies of the book, for better and mostly for worse

W here The Crawdads Sing, the bestselling book of 2019, presents a fantasy of grit and purity: a young white girl, abandoned by her family in the 1950s, learns to fend for herself in a North Carolina marsh, goes from illiterate to acclaimed scientific author without ever abandoning her communion with the land, and finds love as an outcast so suspicious the town assumes she killed her former lover. The debut novel by Delia Owens, a former scientist in her mid-70s known for years of controversial (and possibly violent) conservation work in Africa , offered a seductive blend of romance, murder mystery and feral coming-of-age that, along with a nod from Reese Witherspoon’s book club, helped sell over 12m copies to date.

The Witherspoon-produced film version, directed by Olivia Newman from a script by Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild), faithfully preserves that fantasy for the big screen. Which is to say, a lot of this gutless, often silly, film’s issues are the book’s, beautifully realized and thus reified by trying to make what is essentially a mud-splattered, civil rights-era fairy tale into a lifelike story.

The film, like the book, proceeds on two timelines, the latter being a swampy mystery in 1969: who, if anyone, killed Chase Anderson, the (relatively) rich kid of Barkley Cove, North Carolina, found dead at the base of an old fire tower. Small-town gossip points to “the Marsh Girl”, 24-year-old Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a mysterious object of confusion and scorn who lives alone out in the dense, mostly uninhabited wetlands. Arrested and awaiting trial, a kindly lawyer (David Strathairn), sympathetic to her isolation, draws out Kya’s tale of growing up in the wild, like a folkloric wolf-child.

As a six or seven-year-old, young Kya (Jojo Regina) is abandoned by her mother (Ahna O’Reilly) and older siblings in quick succession – we’re given only a few minutes in an idyllic flashback to know them, so it’s difficult to care about who they are or sympathize with why they left the youngest child alone with an alcoholic, physically abusive father (a menacing Garrett Dillahunt). Skittish, reasonably skeptical of people, and most comfortable alone in the marsh, Kya only lasts a day in school; the other kids tease her as a swamp rat. The film’s portrayal of her poverty is more aesthetic than acute, lest it be actually uncomfortable to watch or she become less sympathetic. Kya is covered in dirt as a child but never remarked upon as smelly, barefoot in an untamed way. We never see her truly starving, and the “shack” in which she lives bears the hallmarks of a genteel existence – books, sofa and pillows, an old radio, boxes of her mother’s fine dresses.

As a lissome, isolated teenager played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, Kya finds connection (and supplies) through Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer, Jr), a general store owner, and his wife Mabel (Michael Hyatt) – kindly black folks who, true to the novel’s sentimentalist roots, do little more than be concerned and kindly to a fellow outsider. With the help of handsome childhood friend Tate (Taylor John Smith), Kya learns to read, to translate her love of the marsh into scientific language, and in the film’s strongest section, to fall in love.

Yet at almost every turn, she is betrayed: by Tate, when he leaves for college without saying goodbye; years later by Chase, when his talk of love and marriage culminates in one disappointing (and accurately rendered) night at a motel and devolves into horrific violation. By the townspeople of Barkley Cove, who are so reluctant to see the intelligent, sensitive young woman beneath the Marsh Girl myth that they suspect her of murder. The final quarter of the two-hour film depicts her brisk, ludicrously simple trial, which only underscores Kya’s pristine innocence and her lifelong commitment to the marsh.

That marsh, filmed in coastal Louisiana, is indeed beautiful – cinematography by Polly Morgan captures vivid sunsets, gliding herons, a maze of waterways transparently worthy of devotion and care. So, too, is Normal People’s Edgar-Jones, who has found somewhat of a niche in supposedly off-putting characters that become, in her hands, doe-like, fragile and magnetic. With her searching, pooled brown eyes, Edgar-Jones can capably play a shy young woman of few words. She breathes life into Kya, particularly in intimate scenes, but struggles to ground the character’s (admittedly confusing) ruggedness; it never makes sense that the town’s No 1 outcast is a thin, conventionally beautiful, quiet and polite white woman.

A braver film would have aimed for actual grit more than the allusion to it, looked to the scabbier (and thus interesting) parts of Kya’s personality, captured a fundamental awkwardness to life outside of human interaction along with an idealized naiveté. Most of all, drawn out darker aspects of Kya’s story that could justify an implausible twist ending that undercuts almost everything that comes before, if you think about it for more than two seconds (this is also a book problem). But Where the Crawdads Sing never really had an interest in complications, or hardship, or racism as anything beyond wallpaper for its central nature girl fantasy of self-reliance. It would rather stay above the fray, gliding prettily along the marsh without actually getting dirty.

Where the Crawdads Sing is out in US cinemas on 15 July and in the UK on 22 July

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‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Review: A Wild Heroine, a Soothing Tale

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as an orphaned girl in the marshes of North Carolina in this tame adaptation of Delia Owens’s popular novel.

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By A.O. Scott

“Where the Crawdads Sing,” Delia Owens’s first novel, is one of the best-selling fiction books in recent years , and if nothing else the new movie version can help you understand why.

Streamlining Owens’s elaborate narrative while remaining faithful to its tone and themes, the director, Olivia Newman, and the screenwriter, Lucy Alibar ( “Beasts of the Southern Wild” ), weave a courtroom drama around a romance that is also a hymn to individual resilience and the wonder of the natural world. Though it celebrates a wild, independent heroine, the film — like the book — is as decorous and soothing as a country-club luncheon.

Set in coastal North Carolina (though filmed in Louisiana), “Where the Crawdads Sing” spends a lot of time in the vast, sun-dappled wetlands its heroine calls home. The disapproving residents of the nearby hamlet of Barkley Cove refer to her as “the marsh girl.” In court, she’s addressed as Catherine Danielle Clark. We know her as Kya.

Played in childhood by Jojo Regina and then by Daisy Edgar-Jones (known for her role in “Normal People” ), Kya is an irresistible if not quite coherent assemblage of familiar literary tropes and traits. Abused and abandoned, she is like the orphan princess in a fairy-tale, stoic in the face of adversity and skilled in the ways of survival. She is brilliant and beautiful, tough and innocent, a natural-born artist and an intuitive naturalist, a scapegoat and something close to a superhero.

That’s a lot. Edgar-Jones has the good sense — or perhaps the brazen audacity — to play Kya as a fairly normal person who finds herself in circumstances that it would be an understatement to describe as improbable. Kya lives most of her life outside of human society, amid the flora and fauna of the marsh, and sometimes she resembles the feral creature the townspeople imagine her to be. Mostly, though, she seems like a skeptical, practical-minded young woman who wants to be left alone, except when she doesn’t.

Kya attracts the attention of two young men. One, a dreamy, blue-eyed fisherman’s son named Tate (Taylor John Smith), who shares her love of shells, feathers and the creatures associated with them. Companions in childhood, they become sweethearts as teenagers, until Tate goes off to college, and Kya gets mixed up with Chase (Harris Dickinson), a handsome cad whose dead body is eventually found at the bottom of a fire tower deep in the marshlands.

Eventually but also right at the beginning. The movie begins with Chase’s death, in October, 1969. Kya is charged with murder, and her trial alternates with the story of her life up until that point. Her mother (Ahna O’Reilly) and siblings flee the violence of an abusive, alcoholic father (Garret Dillahunt), who eventually takes off too, leaving Kya on her own in possession of a metal motorboat, a fixer-upper with a screened-in porch and a curious and creative spirit.

“Where the Crawdads Sing” takes place in the ’50s and ’60s, which on the evidence of the film were uneventful decades in America, especially the American South. Kya’s hermit-like existence — she attends school for one day, doesn’t learn to read until Tate teaches her and has no radio or television — feels a bit like an alibi for the film’s detachment from history. The local store where she sells mussels and gases up her boat is run by a Black couple, Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt), who nurture and protect her and seem to have no problems (or children) of their own.

Kya’s outsider status — bolstered by the presence of David Strathairn as her Atticus Finch-like defense attorney — gives the movie a notion of social concern. Equally faint is the hint of Southern Gothic that sometimes perfumes the swampy air. But for a story about sex, murder, family secrets and class resentments, the temperature is awfully mild, as if a Tennessee Williams play had been sent to Nicholas Sparks for a rewrite.

Where the Crawdads Sing Rated PG-13. Wild but tame. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, where the crawdads sing.

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The cicadas buzz and the moss drips and the sunset casts a golden shimmer on the water every single evening. But while “Where the Crawdads Sing” is rich in atmosphere, it’s sorely lacking in actual substance or suspense.

Maybe it was an impossible task, taking the best-selling source material and turning it into a cinematic experience that would please both devotees and newbies alike. Delia Owens ’ novel became a phenomenon in part as a Reese Witherspoon book club selection; Witherspoon is a producer on “Where the Crawdads Sing,” and Taylor Swift wrote and performs the theme song, adding to the expectation surrounding the film’s arrival.

But the result of its pulpy premise is a movie that’s surprisingly inert. Director Olivia Newman , working from a script by Lucy Alibar , jumps back and forth without much momentum between a young woman’s murder trial and the recollections of her rough-and-tumble childhood in 1950s and ‘60s North Carolina. (Alibar also wrote “ Beasts of the Southern Wild ,” which “Where the Crawdads Sing” resembles somewhat as a story of a resourceful little girl’s survival within a squalid, swampy setting.)  

It is so loaded with plot that it ends up feeling superficial, rendering major revelations as rushed afterthoughts. For a film about a brave woman who’s grown up in the wild, living by her own rules, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is unusually tepid and restrained. And aside from Daisy Edgar-Jones ’ multi-layered performance as its central figure, the characters never evolve beyond a basic trait or two.

We begin in October 1969 in the marshes of fictional Barkley Cove, North Carolina, where a couple of boys stumble upon a dead body lying in the muck. It turns out to be Chase Andrews, a popular big fish in this insular small pond. And Edgar-Jones’ Kya, with whom he’d once had an unlikely romantic entanglement, becomes the prime suspect. She’s an easy target, having long been ostracized and vilified as The Marsh Girl—or when townsfolk are feeling particularly derisive toward her, That Marsh Girl. Flashbacks reveal the abuse she and her family suffered at the hands of her volatile, alcoholic father ( Garret Dillahunt , harrowing in just a few scenes), and the subsequent abandonment she endured as everyone left her, one by one, to fend for herself—starting with her mother. These vivid, early sections are the most emotionally powerful, with Jojo Regina giving an impressive, demanding performance in her first major film role as eight-year-old Kya.

As she grows into her teens and early 20s and Edgar-Jones takes over, two very different young men shape her formative years. There’s the too-good-to-be-true Tate (Taylor John Smith ), a childhood friend who teaches her to read and write and becomes her first love. (“There was something about that boy that eased the tautness in my chest,” Kya narrates, one of many clunky examples of transferring Owens’ words from page to screen.) And later, there’s the arrogant and bullying Chase ( Harris Dickinson ), who’s obviously bad news from the start, something the reclusive Kya is unable to recognize.

But what she lacks in emotional maturity, she makes up for in curiosity about the natural world around her, and she becomes a gifted artist and autodidact. Edgar-Jones embodies Kya’s raw impulses while also subtly registering her apprehension and mistrust. Pretty much everyone lets her down and underestimates her, except for the kindly Black couple who run the local convenience store and serve as makeshift parents (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt , bringing much-needed warmth, even though there’s not much to their characters). David Strathairn gets the least to work with in one of the film’s most crucial roles as Kya’s attorney: a sympathetic, Atticus Finch type who comes out of retirement to represent her.

This becomes especially obvious in the film’s courtroom scenes, which are universally perfunctory and offer only the blandest cliches and expected dramatic beats. Every time “Where the Crawdads Sing” cuts back to Kya’s murder trial—which happens seemingly out of nowhere, with no discernible rhythm or reason—the pacing drags and you’ll wish you were back in the sun-dappled marshes, investigating its many creatures. ( Polly Morgan provides the pleasing cinematography.)

What actually ends up happening here, though, is such a terrible twist—and it all plays out in such dizzyingly speedy fashion—that it’s unintentionally laughable. You get the sensation that everyone involved felt the need to cram it all in, yet still maintain a manageable running time. If you’ve read the book, you know what happened to Chase Andrews; if you haven’t, I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it here. But I will say I had a variety of far more intriguing conclusions swirling around in my head in the car ride home, and you probably will, too. 

Now playing in theaters.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault.

125 minutes

Daisy Edgar-Jones as Catherine 'Kya' Clark

Taylor John Smith as Tate Walker

Harris Dickinson as Chase Andrews

Michael Hyatt as Mabel

Sterling MacEr Jr. as Jumpin'

David Strathairn as Tom Milton

Garret Dillahunt as Pa

Eric Ladin as Eric Chastain

Ahna O'Reilly as Ma

Jojo Regina as Young Kya

• Olivia Newman

Writer (based upon the novel by)

• Delia Owens
• Lucy Alibar

Cinematographer

• Polly Morgan
• Alan Edward Bell
• Mychael Danna

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Where the Crawdads Sing

A woman who raised herself in the marshes of the Deep South becomes a suspect in the murder of a man with whom she was once involved. A woman who raised herself in the marshes of the Deep South becomes a suspect in the murder of a man with whom she was once involved. A woman who raised herself in the marshes of the Deep South becomes a suspect in the murder of a man with whom she was once involved.

• Olivia Newman
• Delia Owens
• Lucy Alibar
• Daisy Edgar-Jones
• Taylor John Smith
• Harris Dickinson
• 724 User reviews
• 194 Critic reviews
• 43 Metascore
• 2 wins & 13 nominations

• Tate Walker

• Chase Andrews

• Jumpin'

• Jodie Clark

• Sheriff Jackson

• Little Tate

• Little Chase

• Little Jodie

• Deputy Perdue

• Eric Chastain

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Delia Owens : The author of the novel is seen in the courtroom sitting on the front row behind Tom when Patti is testifying about Chase's shell necklace.
• Goofs All the of the addresses of publishers Tate gives to Kya have ZIP codes. He gave her the list in 1962; the first ZIP codes were established on July 1, 1963 and were not in common use until the late 1960s/early 1970s.

Tom Milton : Listen. I know you have a world of reasons to hate these people...

Kya Clark : No, I never hated them. They hated me. They laughed at me. They left me. They harassed me. They attacked me. You want me to beg for my life? I don't have it in me. I won't. I will not offer myself up. They can make their decision. But they're not deciding anything about me. It's them. They're judging themselves.

• Crazy credits Kya's drawings appear alongside the credits.
• Connections Featured in Everything Wrong with...: Everything Wrong With Where The Crawdads Sing in 18 Minutes or Less (2023)
• Soundtracks Ain't It Baby Written by Kenny Gamble and Jimmy Bishop Performed by Kenny Gamble & The Romeos Courtesy of Jamie Record Co.

User reviews 724

• nickphelan-25748
• Jul 21, 2022
• How long is Where the Crawdads Sing? Powered by Alexa
• July 15, 2022 (United States)
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• Xa Ngoài Kia Nơi Loài Tôm Hát
• Houma, Louisiana, USA (street scenes)
• 3000 Pictures
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• $24,000,000 (estimated)
• $90,230,760
• $17,253,227
• Jul 17, 2022
• $144,353,965

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• Runtime 2 hours 5 minutes

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• DVD & Streaming

Where the Crawdads Sing

• Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

• July 15, 2022
• Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya Clark; Taylor John Smith as Tate Walker; David Strathairn as Tom Milton; Harris Dickinson as Chase Andrews; Sterling Macer Jr. as Jumpin'; Michael Hyatt as Mabel; Garret Dillahunt as Pa

Home Release Date

• September 6, 2022
• Olivia Newman

Distributor

• Columbia Pictures

Movie Review

She was born and raised in a swamp.

’Course, it’s the “raised” part that’s debatable. Kya Clark’s Pa was a man of heavy-drinking, heavy-fisted ways. Because of that, Ma and Kya’s siblings all left—one-by-one, in cuts and bruises—when she was but a little thing. And her Pa up and left not many years after.

So, at about the age of 8, Kya was called upon to raise herself in that little shack deep in the marsh where the crawdads sing. And being alone was a feeling so vast, it echoed. But she learned how to find things in the marsh to eat. And she dug up swampy mussels to trade at a nearby store for grits and gas and other necessities.

The store’s owners, Jumpin’ and Mable, looked out for her, best they could. They even gave her help in going to the local school to learn reading and writing. But it didn’t stick. The town kids called her Swamp Rat and Marsh Girl, and meanness drove her back to her familiar marshy world.

But there was always that longing, that desire to connect. And as Kya grew older (and prettier) some would turn their eyes in her direction without harsh words. A kind young man named Tate took the time to talk, and to teach her to read. And a popular, but not-as-kind towner named Chase Andrews taught her … other things.

Years later, though, when Chase was found dead in the swamp, many eyes turned in Kya’s direction. The town was certain who the responsible party was: the Marsh Girl!

How couldn’t it be? After all, Kya Clark was just some nasty young woman born in a swamp.

Positive Elements

In spite of all the hardships that little Kya endures, she actually grows to become an educated, kind-hearted young woman. Much of that growth comes through her own effort and desire to better herself. But a lot can be attributed to the people who were kind and giving to her—including Jumpin’, Mabel and Tate.

Tate, in particular, helps Kya out. He offers her his friendship and brings her books so that she can learn to read and learn about the marsh around her. Eventually, she uses the knowledge she’s acquired to catalog and draw the various plants and insects that populate her marsh.

Spiritual Elements

After Jumpin’ implores young Kya to be careful around townspeople, his wife, Mabel, pushes back with a quote from the book of Mathew: “Don’t say that in the Bible. ‘Do unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.’ Don’t say nothin’ about ‘Be careful.’”

Sexual Content

Kya’s first sexual interactions happen with Tate as their friendship blossoms into attraction. We see them hugging and kissing on a number of occasions. And that eventually leads to something more serious. Clothes are removed. A passionate make-out session ensues. We see some caressing, and the camera stays close. Bare backs and shoulders are visible; other areas are strategically covered. Before going too far, however, Tate backs off since he knows he’ll be going away to college soon. “I care about you too much,” he tells her. Elsewhere, he demonstrates that he doesn’t want to take advantage of her.

Much later we see them together again. There’s embracing, kissing and scattered clothes; and it’s implied they have sex. He asks her to marry him while they’re in bed together. She replies, “Aren’t we already?”

Kya’s sexual interactions with Chase are less romantic and respectful. He’s called a Tom Cat by someone because of how he chases and plays with town girls. And that’s reflected in his relationship with Kya. Chase is often aggressive, and he pushes Kya into situations she’s obviously uncomfortable with. There’s kissing and fondling (outside her clothes). They eventually have sex in bed (and it’s implied that it’s uncomfortable for her). He’s shown shirtless, while she’s still clothed from the waist up—though undergarments are obviously removed.

Later, it’s implied that they have an ongoing sex life—and he promises marriage—even though by now he’s also gotten married to another woman from town.

Violent Content

Kya’s dad is an angry drunk. We see him slap 6-year-old Kya so hard she flies off a small pier into the water. He also punches his wife in the face, and she collapses to the ground. Later we see Ma with a swollen face as she slips away from the house to run from him. We see the various siblings with bruises and cut lips before they run away.

Kya soon learns to placate Pa’s mood and stay out of sight as often as possible. He gives her an angry, but grudging, respect for those kinds of choices. But then he leaves as well.

Later, Chase ends up being something of a mirror image of Kya’s dad. He drinks and he gets violent when Kya refuses his advances. At one point he backhands her, punches her in the face and moves to rape her. But she’s older now and defends herself: She hits him back, kicking him and throwing rocks at him before getting away. We see her later with a cut and dark bruise on her face.

Chase and Tate engage in a scuffle in town. The two men punch and slap each other before being pulled apart.

Boys find a dead body in the swamp and the camera eyes the crumpled form. It’s determined he fell forty feet from a nearby fire tower.

We hear that Kya’s mother died from leukemia. An angry man smashes and tears his way through Kya’s small cabin.

Crude or Profane Language

There are a couple uses each of “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d–n,” “h—” and “a–” and one s-word. God’s and Jesus’ names are misused a total of three times (with God being combined with “d–n” on one of those).

Drug and Alcohol Content

We see young Kya’s dad buy Jim Beam at the local store. He drinks it and passes out. And it’s implied that alcohol spurs other rages, too. We also see Chase and friends drink beer.

Other Negative Elements

We occasionally witness Southern racial attitudes of the 1950s and ’60s on display. A local government official talks down to Jumpin’, for instance, calling him a “boy.”

The fact is, both Tate and Chase treat Kya pretty badly. They both turn away from her because of pressure from family and friends to “avoid the Marsh Girl.” (Tate later apologizes for his thoughtless actions.)

Where the Crawdads Sing is a story and a movie of contrasts.

It’s part murder tale and court case, and equal part romance. It tells of a young woman who has become strong and self-sufficient in the face of loneliness and physical abuse. And it’s lovely—thanks in great part to the gentle character portrayal by lead Daisy Edgar-Jones—while at the same time containing sexuality and violence that many will find extremely uncomfortable.

In that sense this film about a young woman who thrives in her love of nature and her longing for connection is much like a wetland flower with soft, fragrant petals atop thorns you cannot help but feel.

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.

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‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Review: The Bestselling Novel Turned Into a Compelling Wild-Child Tale

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kya, the venerable Marsh Girl, in a mystery as dark as it is romantic.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Sometimes a movie will turn softer than you thought it would — more sunny and upbeat and romantic, with a happier ending. Then there’s the kind of movie that turns darker than you expect, with an ominous undertow and an ending that kicks you in the shins. “ Where the Crawdads Sing ” is the rare movie that conforms to both those dynamics at once.

Adapted from Delia Owens ’ debut novel, which has sold 12 million copies since it was published in 2018, the movie is about a young woman whose identity is mired in physical and spiritual harshness. Kya Clark ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ) has grown up all by herself in a shack on a marshy bayou outside Barkley Cove, N.C. When we meet her, it’s 1969 and she’s being put on trial for murder. A young man who Kya was involved with has fallen to his death from a six-story fire tower. Was foul play involved? If so, was Kya the culprit? The local law enforcers don’t seem too interested in evidence. They’ve targeted Kya, who is known by the locals as Marsh Girl. For most of her life, she has been a scary local legend — the scandalous wild child, the wolf girl, the uncivilized outsider. Now, perhaps, she’s become a scapegoat.

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The film then flashes back to 1953, when Kya is about 10 (and played by the feisty Jojo Regina), and her life unfolds as the redneck version of a Dickensian nightmare, with a father (Garret Dillahunt) who’s a violent abuser, a mother (Ahna O’Reilly) who abandons her, and a brother who soon follows. Kya is left with Pa, who retains his cruel ways (when a letter arrives from her mother, he burns it right in front of her), though he eases up on the beatings. Barefoot and undernourished, she tries to go to school and lasts one day; the taunting of the other kids sends her packing. Pa himself soon ditches Kya, leaving the girl to raise herself in that marshland shack.

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All very dark. Yet with these stark currents in place, “Where the Crawdads Sing” segues into episodes with Kya as a teenager and young woman, and for a while the film seems to turn into a kind of badlands YA reverie. Kya may have a past filled with torment, but on her own she’s free — to do what she likes, to find innovative ways to survive (she digs up mussels at dawn and sells them to the Black proprietors of a local general store, played by Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr., who become her caretakers in town), and to chart her own destiny.

You’d expect someone known as Marsh Girl to have a few rough edges. Remember Jodie Foster’s feral backwoods ragamuffin in “Nell”? (She, too, was from North Carolina.) Yet Kya, for a wild child, is pretty refined, with thick flowy hair parted in the middle, a wardrobe of billowy rustic dresses, and a way of speaking that makes her sound like she grew up as the daughter of a couple of English teachers. (Unlike just about everyone else in the movie, she lacks even a hint of a drawl.) She does watercolor drawings of the seashells in the marshland, and her gift for making art is singular. She’s like Huck Finn meets Pippi Longstocking by way of Alanis Morissette.

The English actor Daisy Edgar-Jones, who has mostly worked on television (“Normal People,” “War of the Worlds”), has a doleful, earnest-eyed sensuality reminiscent of the quality that Alana Haim brought to “Licorice Pizza.” She gives Kya a quiet surface but makes her wily and vibrantly poised — which isn’t necessarily wrong , but it cuts against (and maybe reveals) our own prejudices, putting the audience in the position of thinking that someone known as Marsh Girl might not come off as quite this self-possessed. Kya meets a local boy, Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith), who has the look of a preppie dreamboat and teaches her, out of the goodness of his heart, to read and write. It looks like the two are falling in love, at least until it’s time for him to go off to college in Raleigh. Despite his protestations of devotion, Kya knows that he’s not coming back.

You could say that “Where the Crawdads Sing” starts out stormy and threatening, then turns romantic and effusive, then turns foreboding again. Yet that wouldn’t express the way the film’s light and dark tones work together. The movie, written by Lucy Alibar (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”) and directed by Olivia Newman with a confidence and visual vivacity that carry you along (the lusciously crisp cinematography is by Polly Morgan), turns out to be a myth of resilience. It’s Kya’s story, and in her furtive way she keeps undermining the audience’s perceptions about her.

The scenes of Kya’s murder trial are fascinating, because they’re not staged with the usual courtroom-movie cleverness. Kya is defended by Tim Milton ( David Strathairn ), who knew her as a girl and has come out of retirement to see justice done. In his linen suits, with his Southern-gentleman logic, he demolishes one witness after another, but mostly because there isn’t much of a case against Kya. The fellow she’s accused of killing, Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), is the one she took up with after Tate abandoned her, and he’s a sketchier shade of preppie player, with a brusque manner that is less than trustworthy. He keeps her separate from his classy friends in town (at one point we learn why), and his scoundrel tendencies just mount from there. Did she have a motive for foul play?

“Where the Crawdads Sing” is at once a mystery, a romance, a back-to-nature reverie full of gnarled trees and hanging moss, and a parable of women’s power and independence in a world crushed under by masculine will. The movie has a lot of elements that will remind you of other films, like “The Man in the Moon,” the 1991 drama starring Reese Witherspoon (who is one of the producers here). But they combine in an original way. The ending is a genuine jaw-dropper, and while I wouldn’t go near revealing it, I’ll just say that this is a movie about fighting back against male intransigence that has the courage of its outsider spirit.

Reviewed at Museum of Modern Art, July 11, 2022. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 125 MIN.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Releasing release of a 3000 Pictures production. Producers: Reese Witherspoon, Lauren Neustadter. Executive producers: Rhonda Fehr, Betsy Danbury.
• Crew: Director: Olivia Newman. Screenplay: Lucy Alibar. Camera: Polly Morgan. Editor: Alan Edward Bell. Music: Mychael Danna.
• With: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., David Strathairn, Jayson Warner Smith, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna O’Reilly, Eric Ladin.

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Where the Crawdads Sing Reviews

it unfortunately runs the original story through the Hollywood machine, rendering it a surface-level and boilerplate experience that dilutes the emotional profundity of its source material. All the while being a borderline unbearable snooze fest.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2023

No doubt Alibar and Newman are just keeping as close as possible to the book. It is very much to their credit that they have committed so totally to giving the fans what they want without resorting to cheap fan service.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 31, 2023

Where the Crawdads Sing makes for a decent if generic coming-of-age story and a bland murder mystery.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Aug 10, 2023

Try as it might, Where the Crawdads Sing amounts to nothing more than a shallow tale of otherness told through the lens of the prettiest, cleanest marsh girl you’ve ever seen.

Full Review | Aug 6, 2023

A solid interesting idea with a fantastic performance from Daisy really makes the film from being average!

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

The all-female team of director Olivia Newman, screenwriter Lucy Alibar, and producer Reese Witherspoon do a tremendous job of painting a seductive small-town feel to a mystery thriller that should be anything but that.

Sanitized of any elements that could make this a marshy murder, Where The Crawdads Sing is a return to the type of films one would find in the Nicholas Sparksesque cinematic universe.

With no reason to fear for her safety, the bulk of the film feels like a soap opera.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 3, 2023

Where the Crawdads Sing feels like a novel truly coming to life. The scripting, the dialogue, the scenery choices, the score, has it all of the pieces to make you feel its great pacing & progression. The story may be harsh but its all the more encouraging

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 1, 2023

An old-school murder mystery primarily told as a courtroom drama, the paperback adaptation entertains from start to finish.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 13, 2022

The book might have been a phenomenon, however the film lacks “the grits” of the original text. Sadly Where The Crawdads Sing becomes bogged down in courtroom drama tropes to truly sing in its own right.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 13, 2022

…eventually settles for a fairly conventional Southern Gothic narrative with several plot points posted missing but a strong self-empowerment education message…

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 7, 2022

Where the Crawdads Sing is a beautifully haunting story of one girl's quiet resilience in a film that floats across multiple genres: thriller, romance and, ultimately, survival story.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2022

"Where the Crawdads Sing" is an imperfect but captivating drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 10, 2022

Mellifluous but never cheesy, the film seeks effective and healing tears for fans of this kind of fare, and treks through territory that isn't too minor. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 3, 2022

The PG-13-ness of Where the Crawdads Sing buffs every rough edge off this story—the abuse, the abandonment, the betrayal, the sex, and even the alleged murder. It would be better off as trash.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 3, 2022

A coming-of-age story and murder mystery about a young naturalist living in the marshes who has to find out who she can truly trust.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 30, 2022

Daisy Edgar-Jones dominates this role, she has the gift of reflecting any feeling without practically raising an eyebrow. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 29, 2022

Where the Crawdads Sing isn’t terrible because it’s a romantic drama — it’s terrible because it’s terrible.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2022

Edgar-Jones’ easygoing allure isn’t enough to bind Where the Crawdads Sing together, though, leaving the film a generic, dull outing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 27, 2022

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‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Review: The Literary Sensation Becomes a Glossy Summer Popcorn Movie

David ehrlich.

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We may never know the full truth behind Delia Owens’ checkered past as a conservationist — which almost certainly seem to include a militant, white savior-minded approach to policing Zambian wildlife preserves, and may also extend to being a “co-conspirator and accessory” to murder — but the secret to the “ Where the Crawdads Sing ” author’s success is now as obvious as her plotting, even to those of us who had never heard of the runaway bestseller until Taylor Swift invented it a few short weeks ago. Olivia Newman’s (“First Match”) slick and glossy beach read of a movie adaptation brings it all right to the surface. Which is just as well, because the surface is the only layer this movie has.

Yes, this is an expertly contrived melodrama about defiance in the face of abandonment, and sure, it’s also a faintly self-exonerating caricature of a natural woman unspoiled by Western society. But underneath the story’s humid romance with Carolina marshland, and behind its Hollywood-ready façade of backwater Americana, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is really just a swampy riff on “Pygmalion,” with Eliza Doolittle reimagined as a semi-feral outsider who’s obviously the hottest girl in town, but lives in almost complete isolation until the Zack Siler of Barkley Cove teachers her how to read and make out.

Streamlined from its source material with the help of a Lucy Aliber script that embraces the frothiness of Owens’ book while turning down the temperature of its florid, nature is my real mama narration, the film version of “Where the Crawdads Sing” is a lot more fun as a hothouse page-turner than it is as a soulful tale of feminine self-sufficiency. That it’s able to split the difference between Nicholas Sparks and “Nell” with any measure of believability is a testament to Daisy Edgar-Jones ’ careful performance as Kya Clark.

The youngest daughter of an abusive drunk, and the only member of her family who stayed in their remote North Carolina house until the day Pa died sometime in the 1950s, Kya’s childhood was spent watching the people who loved her leave one-by-one (she’s played as a child by Jojo Regina). On her own from an early age, and dehumanized into folklore by the “normal” people in town — especially the kids, who label her “Marsh Girl” and laugh her right back to the swamp when she shows up at school without shoes on — Kya is forced to survive by selling mussels to the nice Black couple who run the local store (Sterling Macer, Jr. as Jumpin, and Michael Hyatt as his wife Mabel).

Some years later she’ll be hauled down to the Barkley Cove jail and forced to stand trial for the murder of a pasty cad named Chase Andrews; it’s there, at the behest of the retired lawyer ( David Strathairn !) who takes her case out of the goodness of his heart, that Kya is finally compelled to share her life story for the first time, her voiceover guiding us through the past in snippets of evocatively overwrought prose that establish her connection to nature. “Marsh is a space of light,” she coos, “where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.” In a real time is a flat circle kind of twist, it often feels like Kya taught herself to write by reading all the other novels that have been canonized by Reese Witherspoon’s book club.

Of course, self-reliant and capable as Kya is, we soon learn that she learned her letters with the help of the square-jawed soft boy who grew up down the creek. The Dawson Leery to Kya’s Joey Potter, Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith) is a kind-hearted soul who lost some family of his own, which might explain why he always remembered the orphaned girl who everyone else in Barkley Cove was eager to forget. In the summer before college, Tate starts leaving Kya supplies on a tree stump — as if he were filling a food trap for a wild animal — only to discover that the Marsh Girl has matured into a movie star. It’s a genuine credit to Newman’s handle on her film’s silly-serious tone that she allows Kya, who doesn’t have electricity or running water, to look like she’s blown all of her mussel money on Pantene Pro-V. Anyway, kissing ensues. Sometimes amid a slow-motion vortex of leaves.

But if Tate thinks the Marsh Girl will always be waiting for him (a girl can only go so far without shoes), he’s in for a rude awakening; once the word gets out that Kya is a total catch, she becomes an irresistible fetish object for the kind of fella who might have less honorable intentions. Enter our corpse-in-waiting, Mr. Chase Andrews. Played by a slithering but somewhat vulnerable Harris Dickinson , who looks so much like Taylor John Smith that his dark-haired character might as well be the blond Tate’s evil twin, Chase loves Kya like a backhanded compliment, and talks down to her even when he’s trying to get her top off. We know he won’t be around for long, but did he fall from that rickety fire tower, or was he pushed? Surely a girl like Kya, so desperate for someone who might not abandon her, wouldn’t kill the one person who hadn’t yet?

That framing device of a question looms in the background of a movie that is far less interested in how Chase dies than it is by how Kya is persecuted for it — by how the Marsh Girl has remained innocent despite a lifetime of prejudice. Shy without being sneaky, naive without seeming childlike, and in tune with nature without going full “raised by wolves” (though the jailhouse cat’s instant affinity for her is a little much), Edgar-Jones’ wide-eyed performance completely sells us on Kya’s reality as a survivor. Her soft voice and defensive posture lend the character a lilting interiority that holds this movie together across multiple timelines.

It’s a doubly impressive feat in an adaptation that’s often edited to feel like a two-hour montage, a nagging issue that leaves “Crawdads” a little off-key from its slippery first half to its inelegant coda (though only one early scene of young Kya and Tate yapping at each other from separate boats truly borders on “Bohemian Rhapsody” territory). It’s just a shame the story’s ultra-predictable ending is presented in a way that denies us the full potential of Edgar-Jones’ performance, as Newman opts for hair-raising inference over primal satisfaction.

To that same point, “Where the Crawdads Sing” works best when it embraces its own true nature as a popcorn movie. Newman seems to recognize that “and David Strathairn” are the three most beautiful words that can ever appear in the opening credits of a studio film, and she gives the actor the space he needs to stalk across a sweaty courtroom in a white suit and make us gasp along with the small crowd of people who’ve gathered to witness Kya’s trial. Dickinson textures Chase as well as the script will allow, but delights in the character’s inherent punchability so that the film’s central love triangle never loses it shape. If Jumpin and Mabel still betray the career-long criticism that Owens tends to infantilize her Black characters, Macer and Hyatt ground their roles in a quiet dignity that pushes back against how they may have been written on the page.

As a movie, “Where the Crawdads Sing” never seems worthy of the hullabaloo that continues to surround the book, but — much like its heroine — Newman’s adaptation finds just enough ways to endure.

Sony Pictures will release “Where the Crawdads Sing” in theaters on Friday, July 15.

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Daisy edgar-jones in ‘where the crawdads sing’: film review.

A young woman raised in the North Carolina marshes becomes the subject of investigation after a grisly murder in this film adaptation of Delia Owens’ best-selling novel.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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Where the Crawdads Sing is the kind of tedious moral fantasy that fuels America’s misguided idealism. It’s an attempt at a complex tale about rejection, difference and survival. But the film, like the novel it’s based on, skirts the issues — of race, gender and class — that would texture its narrative and strengthen its broad thesis, resulting in a story that says more about how whiteness operates in a society allergic to interdependence than it does about how communities fail young people.

Directed by Olivia Newman ( First Match ), the film adaptation of Delia Owens’ popular and controversial novel of the same name tells the remarkable tale of a shy, reclusive girl raised in the marshes of North Carolina who finds herself embroiled in a grisly police investigation. Her name is Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones of Normal People , Fresh and Under the Banner of Heaven ), but to those in the neighboring town, whose residents abhor her, she is known simply as “Marsh Girl.” The account of her life is remarkable because it requires such a powerful suspension of disbelief, a complete abandonment of logic and total submission to the workaday beats of this story.

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Release date: Friday, July 15 Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer, Jr., David Strathairn Director: Olivia Newman Screenwriter: Lucy Alibar Based upon the novel by: Delia Owens

Since its publication in 2018, Owens’ novel has garnered rabid praise and heavy criticism. Reese Witherspoon , one of the film’s producers, made it her Book Club pick in September of that year, and to date 12 million copies have been sold. Fans of Where the Crawdads Sing tend to admire its beatific descriptions of Kya’s world and ostensibly gripping narrative of a girl abandoned and disappointed by almost everyone in her life.

Those less enchanted by the style and the glorification of hyper-independence have pointed out Owens’ troubling treatment of Black characters, the whiffs of classism in her use of dialect and the eerie connections between the novel and Owens’ alleged involvement in a 1990s televised killing of a poacher in Zambia. That latter story in particular reveals troubling levels of white saviorism and condescension toward African countries. That Owens — already well-known before the novel — has managed to build an even more successful career despite details of her past resurfacing is bewildering.    

Where the Crawdads Sing ’s problems can be traced back to the source material. The story, adapted for the screen by Lucy Alibar ( Beasts of the Southern Wild ), opens with the murder of Chase Andrews ( Harris Dickinson ), a beloved resident of the fictional town of Barkley Cove. Cops stumble upon his dead body in the marsh and, after haphazardly scanning the perimeter, declare it a homicide.

Residents of the town, a judgmental and gossiping bunch, are quick to point fingers at Kya, a naturalist and loner, who has lived in the surrounding marshlands for 25 years. After the police arrest Kya (she tries but fails to escape into the verdant, grassy terrain), they send her to jail. Tom Milton (David Strathairn), a local lawyer who has known Kya since she was a barefoot child, decides to represent the young woman.

The film — admirably shot by DP Polly Morgan — stitches together scenes of a nervous Kya in court with flashbacks of her past. Occasionally, Kya, through voiceover, includes additional details about her relationships and feelings toward other people. The first flashback takes us to 1953, where shots of the marshland, colored by a warm, vivid palette, are interrupted by the gray, subdued reality of Kya’s upbringing. She is one of five children, who, in addition to her mother (Ahna O’Reilly), are abused by her alcoholic and temperamental father (Garret Dillahunt). One by one, beginning with her mother, Kya’s family members leave the marsh. Why none of them try to take the youngest child with them is never explained.

This plot hole leaves room to contrive a situation in which Kya, whose father eventually leaves too, lives alone in her tiny family house that sits on acres of marshland. It also allows the film to establish what will become Kya’s most important connection: her relationship with the Black couple who own a local grocery store, Mabel (Michael Hyatt) and Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer, Jr.).

Kya, with the help of this unsurprisingly thinly sketched couple, manages to cobble a life together. She wakes up at dawn to harvest mussels, which she sells to Jumpin’ in exchange for provisions. Mabel teaches her how to count, gives her treats and sews her beautiful dresses (a nod here to costume designer Mirren Gordon-Crozier’s fine work). Occasionally, Kya must dodge child services and hawkish developers.

Although Where the Crawdads Sing is keen on highlighting Kya’s hyper-independence, she survives thanks to the help of Mabel, Jumpin’ and eventually Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith). Tate, a diffident, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy from town, leaves Kya some seeds, teaches her how to read and write and encourages her gift for identifying and drawing the shells, insects, plants and animals of the marsh. Their relationship evolves slowly, in the manner of a predictably plotted YA novel.

Kya is a perplexing figure considering the twists and turns the film takes; for someone whose survival skills and instincts are repeatedly telegraphed, she comes across as dangerously naïve. Jojo Regina, who plays Kya as a child, and Edgar-Jones, who plays her as a young adult, try to make sense of her, but their performances can’t overcome the inconsistencies of what’s on the page.

More flashbacks — 1953, followed by 1962 and then 1968 — show us how Kya’s relationship to the world outside the marsh changes. She learns to love and trust. Her heart gets broken: Edgar-Jones’ most impressive scene is when Kya, upon realizing she has been abandoned again, breaks down on the beach. Morgan’s dexterity with lighting is evident here, and I’d be remiss not to mention the beauty of the film, shot on location in Louisiana’s thick marshes.

Over the years, Kya starts to believe in herself more. She grows less reserved, finds new ways to share her talent with the world and make more money. She even falls in love again. Couple this coming-of-age arc with the courtroom scenes (taking place in 1969) and Where the Crawdads resembles an odd amalgamation of a Nicholas Sparks film, The Help and To Kill a Mockingbird . But whereas the latter two examples contained a modicum of racial awareness, Where the Crawdads Sing is largely devoid of just that.

The narrative depends heavily on racial and gender stereotypes and classist thinking to operate. Mabel and Jumpin’ exist to help Kya survive. Kya’s beauty and delicateness are so over-emphasized that she comes off more manic pixie dream girl than misanthropic protagonist. There is over-reliance on well-timed bombshells to keep us distracted. For many people, Where the Crawdads Sing struck an emotional chord, but it’s worth considering what one has to ignore in order to get there.

Full credits

Distributor: Sony Pictures Production company: 3000 Pictures Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer, Jr., David Strathairn Director: Olivia Newman Screenwriter: Lucy Alibar Based upon the novel by: Delia Owens Producer: Reese Witherspoon, Lauren Neustadter Executive producers: Rhonda Fehr, Betsy Danbury Director of photography: Polly Morgan Production designer: Sue Chan Costume designer: Mirren Gordon-Crozier Editor: Alan Edward Bell Composer: Mychael Danna Casting director: David Rubin

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Where The Crawdads Sing Reviews Are In, See What Critics Are Saying About The Adaptation Of The Bestselling Book

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars in the book-to-film adaptation.

Delia Owens took the literary world by storm with her 2018 novel Where the Crawdads Sing , and it was little surprise when the film got picked up to be adapted as a movie . Reese Witherspoon is a producer on the upcoming mystery drama after selecting the book for her Hello Sunshine Book Club, and now audiences are about to see the struggles of Marsh Girl Kya play out on the big screen. Where the Crawdads Sing has screened for critics ahead of its July 22 release, and the reviews are in.

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Kya Clark, a girl who is forced to grow up early and learn to survive on her own in the North Carolina marsh after being abandoned by her parents and siblings. Kya finds herself a suspect in a murder when her ex-boyfriend Chace Andrews (Harris Dickinson) turns up dead. 

So how did critics feel about director Olivia Newman’s vision of Delia Owens’ best-selling book ? Let’s turn to the reviews, starting with CinemaBlend’s review of Where the Crawdads Sing . Our own Sarah El-Mahmoud rates the film 3 stars out 5, saying the film loses some of the spirit of the beloved book, as Olivia Newman seems to avoid the story’s grittiness in a somewhat glossy adaptation. She argues:

Just because a story is popular and is given a sizable budget to be adapted to the big screen, why should the spirit of the character be made nice and marketable, when the very core of her being is someone who is rough around the edges and cast out by the mainstream?

Hoai-Tran Bui of SlashFilm was similarly underwhelmed with the film, rating it 6 out of 10. This review says the murder mystery is turned into a glossy romance, resulting in a “soapy snooze”:

Despite the sordid stories surrounding its author and despite the sensationalist murder trial which makes up the bulk of its narrative, Where the Crawdads Sing is pretty banal. Its attempts at social commentary comes up short, while its heartstring-tugging is half-assed. The bildungsroman beats are promising before it gives way to the soapy love triangle that feels like a Nicholas Sparks reject. The saving graces are Edgar-Jones and David Straithairn, the latter of whom gives a warm, folksy performance as Kya's lawyer and lone sympathetic ear during the trial that seems like it's all but convicted her for murder based on evidence that is clearly circumstantial.

Lovia Gyarkye of The Hollywood Reporter calls the adaptation a “muddled moral fantasy” whose narrative relies heavily on racial and gender stereotypes. This review says while the Black characters are underdeveloped (a fault of the book as well, the critic argues), Kya is painted as so beautiful and delicate that she comes off as more “manic pixie dream girl than misanthropic protagonist”:

Where the Crawdads Sing is the kind of tedious moral fantasy that fuels America’s misguided idealism. It’s an attempt at a complex tale about rejection, difference and survival. But the film, like the novel it’s based on, skirts the issues — of race, gender and class — that would texture its narrative and strengthen its broad thesis, resulting in a story that says more about how whiteness operates in a society allergic to interdependence than it does about how communities fail young people.

David Ehrlich of IndieWire grades the movie a C+, saying Olivia Newman made Delia Owens’ literary sensation into a summer popcorn flick, as it never dives deeper than surface level. The film adaptation isn’t worthy of same celebration received by the book, but it finds just enough ways to endure, in large part thanks to its star, the review says:

The film version of Where the Crawdads Sing is a lot more fun as a hothouse page-turner than it is as a soulful tale of feminine self-sufficiency. That it’s able to split the difference between Nicholas Sparks and Nell with any measure of believability is a testament to Daisy Edgar-Jones’ careful performance as Kya Clark.

Owen Gleiberman of Variety , meanwhile, finds Where the Crawdads Sing “compelling,” but says Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Kya is quite “poised” and “refined” for a character who learned to survive on her own and is known as a “wild child.” Overall, Where the Crawdads Sing is as dark as it is romantic, he says:

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Where the Crawdads Sing is at once a mystery, a romance, a back-to-nature reverie full of gnarled trees and hanging moss, and a parable of women’s power and independence in a world crushed under by masculine will. ... The ending is a genuine jaw-dropper, and while I wouldn’t go near reveling it, I’ll just say that this is a movie about fighting back against male intransigence that has the courage of its outsider spirit.

If you want to see what all the fuss is about, you’ll be able to check out Where the Crawdads Sing when it hits theaters on Friday, July 22. Until then, be sure to check out our 2022 Movie Release Schedule to see what other films will be gracing a theater near you in the near future.

Heidi Venable is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend, a mom of two and a hard-core '90s kid. She started freelancing for CinemaBlend in 2020 and officially came on board in 2021. Her job entails writing news stories and TV reactions from some of her favorite prime-time shows like Grey's Anatomy and The Bachelor. She graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a degree in Journalism and worked in the newspaper industry for almost two decades in multiple roles including Sports Editor, Page Designer and Online Editor. Unprovoked, will quote Friends in any situation. Thrives on New Orleans Saints football, The West Wing and taco trucks.

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Review: ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ is the latest literary sensation turned ho-hum movie

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In 2018, retired zoologist Delia Owens, the author of the bestselling 1984 memoir “Cry of the Kalahari,” published her first novel at the age of 69. “Where the Crawdads Sing” is set on the North Carolina coast in the 1950s and ’60s, threading romance and murder mystery through the life story of a young, isolated woman, Kya, who grows up abandoned in the marsh. The story is a bit far-fetched, the characterizations broad, but there’s a beauty in Owens’ description of Kya’s relationship to the natural world. Her derisive nickname, “the Marsh Girl,” ultimately becomes her strength.

“Where the Crawdads Sing” has become a legitimate publishing phenomenon, one of the bestselling books of all time, despite a controversy bubbling in Owens’ past — a connection to the killing of a suspected animal poacher in Zambia. Reese Witherspoon bestowed the book with her book club blessing, and as she has done with other titles from her club, like “Big Little Lies,” Witherspoon has produced the film adaptation of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” written by Lucy Alibar, directed by Olivia Newman, and starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as the heroine, Kya.

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The film is easily slotted into the Southern gothic courtroom drama sub-genre — it’s like “A Time to Kill” with a feminine touch. While the nature of adaptation requires compression and elision, the film dutifully tells the story that fans of the book will turn out to see brought to life on the big screen. But in checking off all the plot points, the movie version loses what makes the book work, which is the time we spend with Kya.

Kya is a tricky protagonist whose life story requires a certain suspension of disbelief. Abandoned by her mother (Ahna O’Reilly) and siblings escaping the drunken abuse of her father (Garret Dillahunt), who later disappears, young Kya (Jojo Regina) survives on her own, selling mussels to the proprietor of the local bait and tackle shop, Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.). His wife, Mabel (Michael Hyatt), takes pity on Kya and offers her some clothes and food donations, but it’s an exceedingly tough existence, something that the film does not manage to fully convey.

As a teen, Kya forms a friendship with a local boy, Tate (Taylor John Smith), who teaches her to read, and though their relationship turns romantic, he ultimately leaves her for college. Abandoned once again, she seeks companionship with popular local cad Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). It’s his death, from a fall at the rickety fire tower, that sees Kya on trial in the town of Barkley Cove, which ultimately becomes a referendum on how she’s been harshly judged over the years by the townspeople.

The only reason Kya works in the book is the amount of time the reader spends with her in the marsh, understanding the tactics she uses to get by, and getting to know the natural world in the way that she does, observing the patterns and life cycles of animals, insects, and plants. The deep knowledge of her environment and ad-hoc education from Tate helps Kya overcome poverty, as she publishes illustrated books of local shells, plants, and birds. But in the film, which sacrifices getting to know her in order to prioritize the more scandal-driven twists and turns, Kya comes off as somewhat silly, a bit easy to laugh at in her naiveté and guilelessness.

There’s also the matter of plausibility, and the shininess with which this rough, wild world has been rendered by Newman and cinematographer Polly Morgan. The marsh (shot on location in Louisiana) is captured with a crisp, if perfunctory beauty, but it’s hard to buy English rose Edgar-Jones in her crisp blouses and clean jeans as the near-feral naturalist who has been brutally cast out by society. Everything’s just too pretty, a Disneyland version of the marsh.

The whole world feels sanded-down and spit-shined within an inch of its life, lacking any grime or grit that might make this feel authentic, and that extends to the storytelling as well. It feels exceedingly rushed, as the actors hit their marks and deliver their monologues with a sense of obligation to moving the plot along rather than developing character. Hyatt, as Mabel, and David Strathairn, who plays Kya’s lawyer, Tom Milton, are the only actors who deliver grounded performances that feel like real people — everyone else feels like a two-dimensional version of an archetype spouting the necessary backstory or subtext to keep the plot churning forward.

Though it is faithful, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is lacking the essential character and storytelling connective tissue that makes a story like this work — an adaptation such as this cannot survive on plot alone.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

'Where the Crawdads Sing'

Rating: PG-13, for sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes Playing: In general release July 15

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Where the Crawdads Sing review: A glossy, Instagram-primed buffet of cinematic faux-feminism

Film adaptation of delia owens’ murky bestseller depicts rural south carolina as scrubbed so clean you might as well call it #swampcore, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Olivia Newman. Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer, Jr, David Strathairn. 15, 126 minutes.

Welcome to Hollywood – where even an active murder investigation isn’t enough to halt the adaptation of a best-selling book into a glossy, Instagram-primed buffet of cinematic faux-feminism. Where the Crawdads Sing , having sold more than 12 million copies since its publication in 2018, is the very definition of a literary sensation. It was featured as part of Reese Witherspoon’s book club. The actor now serves as the film’s executive producer.

Usually, you’d applaud that kind of sage entrepreneurship. But Delia Owens, who wrote Where the Crawdads Sing , is currently wanted for questioning by the Zambian authorities over a piece of ABC News footage that appears to show the shooting and killing by persons unknown of an unidentified poacher on a wildlife reserve overseen by Owens and her husband, Mark. And anyone who argues that these are merely irrelevant pieces of biography – unproven accusations that would sit more comfortably in the margins of a gossip magazine – is faced with the odd and uncomfortable reality that so much of Where the Crawdads Sing reads as a moral defence for nature’s laws superseding those set down by man.

“A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin,” the book’s prologue reads, along with the opening lines of Olivia Newman’s film. Its protagonist, Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ), is steadfastly presented as someone whose tether to her marshland home, in South Carolina, is a talisman of unblemished authenticity. When the body of a local man, Chase Andrews ( Harris Dickinson ), is discovered out in the wilderness, everyone assumes that Kya, the reclusive “Marsh Girl” who’s been systematically abandoned by her entire family, must be responsible. She’s arrested and immediately thrown in jail.

Kya and Chase had some sort of dalliance, a distraction from the toils of her star-crossed, fairytale romance with childhood sweetheart Tate ( Taylor John Smith , who is just as blandly pleasant as the role requires). And it’s that Nicholas Sparks-adjacent, impassioned but oh-so chaste love story that Newman and screenwriter Lucy Alibar seem most heavily invested in. I’m not at all surprised. Owens does have a certain, swoony turn of phrase – “being completely alone was a feeling so vast it echoed” is especially lovely – and scenes of Kya and Tate making out inside a tornado of leaves, or as a flock of seabirds tear their way up to the sky, are earnestly staged by Newman.

Does the fact the film largely ignores the book’s treatise on nature and virtue absolve it of all connections to Owens’s real-life controversies? It certainly doesn’t, on an artistic level, improve what’s already contained on the page. Newman’s vision of rural South Carolina is scrubbed so clean you might as well call it #swampcore – the Spanish moss looks bright and pristine, the flower petals on the water almost consciously arranged. Owens, at least, presented the wild as wild. Kya, too, is a young woman treated as if she were feral by those around her, while simultaneously dressing and grooming herself like an Instagram tradwife. There’s a scene where she walks into town, and everyone reacts in shock – this is the first time they’ve ever seen her in makeup and with her hair combed. She looks exactly the same as she does in every other scene in the film.

Where the Crawdads Sing , in short, treats rural poverty as if it were a desirable aesthetic, the ultimate way to reconnect with nature. That’s a problem not only for the obvious reasons. We hear David Strathairn’s kindly lawyer argue in court that Kya never had “the weakness of character” to murder Chase. It feels like we’re being asked to empathise with her less because she’s a social outcast and more because she’s a skinny, pretty, white girl. Edgar-Jones certainly doesn’t skimp on the doe-eyed naivete – post- Normal People and Fresh , there’s a real danger of her being boxed into these kinds of waif roles. Her marginalisation isn’t treated as much more than not being invited to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table.

It feels particularly farcical in the face of how the film’s sole Black characters are treated – a local couple, Jumpin (Sterling Macer Jr) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt), who own a store and care for the abandoned Kya with saintly generosity. Race, in a film set in Sixties South Carolina, does not factor. The film is rigorously insistent that Kya is the only person in her area code who has ever been persecuted in any way.

Again, if anyone had been paying attention to Owens’ past conservation activities, they might have drawn a connection between how patronisingly stereotyped the Black characters are in her book and past allegations of a racist attitude towards the people of Zambia (an acquaintance, in a New Yorker article published in 2010, characterised her views as “Nice continent. Pity about the Africans”). But, hey, who has time to check up on those things when there’s so much money to be made?

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ is in cinemas from 22 July

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Where the Crawdads Sing Eats Itself into Nothingness

In a perfect vacuum, you probably wouldn’t guess that Where the Crawdads Sing is based on a runaway publishing phenomenon, a book that has sold more than 12 million copies in just a few years. One doesn’t have to have loved Delia Owens’s debut novel to see why it has appealed to countless readers. Part murder mystery, part swoony romance, part cornpone coming-of-age tale, it’s an atmospheric and gleefully overheated melodrama, the kind of book that might make you tear up even as you curse its (many, many) shortcomings. The movie is resolutely faithful to the incidents of the novel, but it doesn’t seem particularly interested in standing on its own, in being a movie . It feels like an illustration more than an adaptation.

The story of Kya Clark, a young girl abandoned by her destitute family and forced to survive on her own in a remote corner of the North Carolina wilderness, the film starts off (much like the book) with a murder investigation and then flashes back to her life. The body of a man, Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), has been found in the woods, and suspicion has settled on Kya (played as an adult by Daisy Edgar-Jones), a loner known to much of the town as “the Marsh Girl.” Taking up the case is a kindly local retired lawyer (played by a much-needed David Strathairn), who believes that Kya has been accused not because of any actual evidence against her, but because she’s been an outcast all her life, ridiculed and hated for years by the townsfolk as some kind of crazy, uncivilized brute.

As we go through Kya’s earlier years, we see a childhood defined by solitude — her mother and her siblings all leave their abusive father one by one, and dad himself (Garret Dillahunt) eventually disappears, leaving Kya alone in the family’s run-down shack on the edge of the marsh. As she grows up, Kya is romanced by a couple of blandly handsome two by fours — nerdy-nice Tate (played by Taylor John Smith as a grown-up) who shares her obsession with nature but then abandons her, and then local rich-boy Chase, who seems fascinated by her but clearly has little interest in a real relationship. We’re supposed to like one and dislike the other, but both Tate and Chase are so underdeveloped that it’s initially hard to feel much of anything for either. They barely register as people. Smith does little but stare lovingly, and Dickinson (who has, to be fair, distinguished himself in previous roles) brings a dash of snotty entitlement to Chase, but not much else.

The best thing about both novel and movie is Kya herself, a submerged character who finds solace and companionship in nature, and who, never having lived anything resembling a normal life around other people, doesn’t quite know what to do with her emotions. As the young Marsh Girl, Jojo Regina is quite moving; your heart goes out to her when a character reads out the local school lunch menu as a way of enticing the impoverished Kya to attend class. It’s a tough balance, to present a child as being both feisty and vulnerable without going overboard into schmaltzy pathos, and the film handles that particular challenge fairly well. As the grown-up Kya, Edgar-Jones is perhaps best at conveying this young woman’s wounded inner life; that speaks to the actress’s talents. However, she never really feels like someone who emerged from this world, but rather one who was dropped into it; that speaks to the clunky filmmaking.

It’s kind of a shock to find the movie version of Crawdads so lacking in atmosphere, as you’d think that’d be the one thing it would nail. Not the least because that lies at the heart of the book’s appeal: Owens spends pages describing the rough, wild, primeval world in which Kya lives, and she convincingly presents the girl as a part of the natural order of this untouched world. At various points, Kya sees herself reflected in the behavior of wild turkeys, snow geese, fireflies, seagulls, and more. She calls herself a seashell and later on finds friendship in Sunday Justice, the jailhouse cat. Where the Crawdads Sing is a book that drips with atmosphere and environmental detail, which enhance our understanding of the protagonist — and help justify some of the story’s more dramatic turns. Owens is herself a retired wildlife biologist who had previously written a number of nature books before turning to fiction. It’s no surprise that her novel works best as an extension of her prior work.

By contrast, the film’s director, Olivia Newman, presents the marsh as a postcard-pretty backdrop, a mostly distant and at times surprisingly calm and orderly space. There’s little sense of wildness, of unpredictability or abandon. Readers will of course often imagine settings differently than film adaptations, but that’s not the problem here. Onscreen, the marsh just never really registers as any kind of place, and it certainly doesn’t register as a spiritual canvas for Kya’s journey. (At times, I wondered if some of the landscape shots might actually have been green-screened in.) Even the fact that Kya has spent much of her life drawing the wildlife of the region – which ultimately plays a huge role in who she becomes – doesn’t come into play until relatively late in the film. None of these would necessarily be problems if the film weren’t otherwise so faithful to the book’s narrative.

This is the challenge of literary condensation. The murder investigation and the ensuing courtroom drama are the least compelling parts of Owens’s novel, there mostly as a loose framing device to tell Kya’s life story. Indeed, she saves the bulk of the trial for the back half of the book, and then breezes by the suspense and the procedural back-and-forth, presumably because she’s not interested in all that. (Spoiler alert: She’s more interested in the twist she springs in her final pages – a twist that also has some eerie echoes of a real-life murder investigation in Zambia that Owens and her ex-husband are reportedly embroiled in, but that’s a whole other crazy story .)

That leaves the movie with a genre-friendly structure, but almost nothing to populate it with. As a result, for much of Where the Crawdads Sing , we’re left watching a not-very interesting and all-but predetermined trial, with little suspense or surprise. We don’t ever really see what the prosecution’s case is against Kya. (If you read the book, you’d have some sense of it, but even there, it’s cursory and half-baked.) It’s a classic Catch-22: The film, to stay true to its wildly popular source material, has to focus on the case, which in turn leaves the picture little room to breathe, to let the audience bask in the atmosphere of this fascinating milieu… which is at least partly why the source material was so wildly popular in the first place. So, forget the crawdads, the turkeys, the fireflies, the seashells, and the snow geese. Forget even the jailhouse cat. The movie is a snake that eats itself.

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‘Where The Crawdads Sing’: Review

By Tim Grierson, Senior US Critic 2022-07-12T16:00:00+01:00

Daisy Edgar-Jones shines in this otherwise pulpy adaptation of the Delia Owens bestseller

Source: Sony Pictures

‘Where The Crawdads Sing’

Dir: Olivia Newman. US. 2022. 125mins

Toxic masculinity, domestic abuse and the shunning of the less-fortunate: Where The Crawdads Sing seethes with myriad social ills, but this adaptation of the Delia Owens bestseller proves to be an unconvincing, melodramatic affair that only occasionally locates the story’s mournful heart. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays a loner who’s lived away from society, only to be suspected of murder because the community considers her nothing more than a freakish recluse. A mixture of love story, courtroom drama and whodunit, the film tends toward cliche, packed with underdeveloped performances and unearned plot twists.

Daisy Edgar-Jones, superb in the 2020 miniseries  Normal People , brings a vulnerability and subtle steel to Kya

Sony will release Crawdads on July 15 in the US and July 22 in the UK, the anticipation bolstered by the book’s popularity. (Since the novel debuted in 2018, it has sold approximately 12 million copies.) Reese Witherspoon produced this adaptation after selecting the novel for her influential Book Club, and will be hoping that real-world controversies surrounding the Owens family and a murder in Zambia in the 1990s, as detailed in a recent investigative piece in ’The Atlantic’, won’t deter potential viewers. But while there’s certainly room at the multiplex for an event film that has nothing to do with superheroes or Minions, it’s more likely that it will be less-than-glowing reviews that impact theatrical prospects.

Rural North Carolina, 1969. Kya (Edgar-Jones) lives by herself in her family’s rustic house out in the marshlands, all her life being cruelly nicknamed “The Marsh Girl” by the townspeople. But when the handsome, popular Chase (Harris Dickinson) is found dead — and because they engaged in a secret romantic relationship — Kya is put on trial, the kindly retired local attorney Tom (David Strathairn) stepping in to represent her.

That trial is juxtaposed with a series of flashbacks as we see the adolescence of the now-25-year-old Kya, who survived an abusive father (Garret Dillahunt), endured poverty, received no formal education and learned to fend for herself, eventually attracting the fancy of a fellow nature-lover, Tate (Taylor John Smith). However, Kya and Tate are soon split apart due to complicated circumstances, leading to her tentative courtship with the cockier Chase.

Director Olivia Newman ( First Match ) works with cinematographer Polly Morgan to capture the beauty of the landscape, suggesting an earthly paradise in which Kya can escape from the world. ( Crawdads was shot outside of New Orleans.) But it’s a paradise that’s constantly threatened, either by her violent father in flashback or by society Kya goes to trial in 1969, facing the possibility of the death penalty if she’s found guilty. 

Edgar-Jones, superb in the 2020 miniseries Normal People , brings a vulnerability and subtle steel to Kya, who is used to being shunned, although that public scorn has done nothing to crush her spirits or dampen her artistic flowering. The character ends up being too much of a construct — a milder variation of the feral wild child cut off from the so-called civilised world — but Edgar-Jones does her best to illuminate Kya’s buried trauma and resilient decency.

Unfortunately, neither of the men in her orbit are especially riveting romantic options. Smith plays Tate with a winning wholesomeness, but his rapport with Edgar-Jones lacks electricity. As a result, the characters’ love affair is a little too chaste, which is meant to contrast later with Chase’s bad-boy demeanour, resulting in a fractious relationship that draws uncomfortable comparisons for Kya to the way her father treated her mother. Dickinson exuded melancholy soulfulness as the dim, hunky model in the Palme d’Or-winning Triangle Of Sadness , but in Crawdads he’s trapped in a far more one-dimensional role as an entitled, snide jock. 

Newman fails to enliven familiar scenes of courtroom intrigue — spectators react with predictably overheated shock to each surprising bit of testimony — and as the flashbacks begin to hint at what happened to Chase, Crawdads builds to an unsubtle condemnation of a close-minded patriarchy that literally and figuratively puts a woman like Kya on trial.

To be sure, the film has valid points to raise about sexual assault and society’s refusal to believe women, but the story’s page-turning pulpiness comes across as shallow and sensational rather than thoughtful or emotionally charged. As for Crawdads ’ final reveal, in a more compelling picture such a twist would have forced the audience to question how we perceive “victims” and “survivors.” Instead, it merely feels glib, an artificial way to hit viewers with one last narrative wallop. 

Production company: Hello Sunshine

Worldwide distribution: Sony Pictures

Producers: Reese Witherspoon, Lauren Neustadter

Screenplay: Lucy Alibar, based upon the novel by Delia Owens

Cinematography: Polly Morgan

Production design: Sue Chan

Editing: Alan Edward Bell

Music: Mychael Danna

Main cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., Jojo Regina, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna O’Reilly, David Strathairn

• United States

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‘Where the Crawdads Sing’: ‘Blue Lagoon’ meets ‘Murder, She Wrote’

Southern-fried whodunit/romance is based on Delia Owens’s 2018 best-selling novel

“I don’t know if there’s a dark side to nature,” says the budding-conservationist protagonist of “Where the Crawdads Sing.” “Just inventive ways to endure.”

That’s how Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones) sums up her views on the animal kingdom — and humanity — in this lyrical coming-of-age story (which also doubles as a murder mystery). First-time director Olivia Newman, adapting Delia Owens’s 2018 bestseller, paints a lush picture of Southern marshland, using large brushstrokes that sometimes recall a Nicholas Sparks melodrama. Yet underneath all the natural beauty lurks something dark indeed.

The film begins in 1969, with Louisiana filling in for the fictional coastal town of Barkley Cove, N.C. Police are investigating the death of a young man named Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson) — the prime suspect being Kya, a recluse who has spent much of her young life living alone in the woods. Most townspeople call her “Marsh Girl” and know she had been romantically involved with Chase. They assume the worst of someone they’ve long thought of as a wild child. Fortunately for Kya, gentleman lawyer Tom Milton (David Strathairn) comes out of retirement to defend her.

As Kya tells her story to Tom, the “Crawdads” timeline shifts from the murder investigation to flashbacks of Kya’s troubled childhood. When she was little, Kya (Jojo Regina) stood by as her mother and, eventually, all her siblings ran away from home to escape their drunken, abusive father (Garret Dillahunt). The film’s title is taken from the advice of Kya’s big brother, Cody, who, as he leaves home, tells his 9-year-old sister where to hide when Pa comes looking for a punching bag.

In time, even Pa leaves. Yet there are people looking out for Kya. People like Jumpin’ and Mabel (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt), who run the local supply store, and, most crucially, people like Tate (Taylor John Smith), who befriends her, teaches her how to read and write, and gradually falls in love with her. “I didn’t know words could hold so much,” she tells him, before he, too, abandons her.

“Marsh is not swamp,” Kya narrates as the film begins. “Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.” But as much as “Crawdads” seems to rhapsodize about nature, this is a violent paradise that at times suggests a young adult drama directed by Werner Herzog. (Yes, that Werner Herzog.)

London-born Edgar-Jones (“Cold Feet”) convincingly portrays Kya’s haunted shyness, though she doesn’t really look like somebody you or I would shun: Even though she’s raised herself in the woods, her pastoral wardrobe is less feral child than, say, Anthropologie’s summer collection. As Kya’s contrasting young beaus, Dickinson and Smith look pretty much interchangeable, but each actor aptly conveys his respective role: brutal jock in the case of Chase, and sensitive scholar for Tate. With Strathairn’s gentle gravitas suggesting an elderly Atticus Finch, much of “Crawdads” seems like a misty-eyed look at an innocent American past. Not to spoil things, but that’s not exactly what plays out.

Screenwriter Lucy Alibar (“ Beasts of the Southern Wild ”) adapts the source material with a nod to the magic realism that characterized her Oscar-nominated screenplay for that 2012 drama, co-written with director Benh Zeitlin. But although set in a similarly rural environment and, like “Beasts,” revolving around a father and daughter, “Crawdads” is much more conventional, its tone shifting from young love to a small-town crime story. It’s Southern-fried “The Blue Lagoon” meets “Murder, She Wrote” — and topped off with a sprinkling of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

But there’s a more curious resonance with Owens’s own personal life. According to a recent Atlantic article, the “Crawdads” author is wanted for questioning in Zambia in connection with the 1995 killing of an alleged poacher — whose execution was captured on videotape and, the article suggests, may have been carried out by a member of Owens’s family. (There is no statute of limitations on murder in Zambia.)

One might wonder whether the fictional narrative of the beleaguered waif in a judgmental small town is Owens’s way of addressing something in her own past. If there’s an impulse to see Kya as a somewhat Edenic figure, don’t be so quick to judge.

As Taylor Swift sings in “Carolina,” the film’s closing song — which, in its lyrics about “creeks runnin’ through my veins,” bridges pop music with Americana — there’s also an ominous warning: “Muddy these webs we weave.”

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains sexual material and some violence, including a sexual assault. 125 minutes.

• Entertainment

‘Where The Crawdads Sing’ review: A faithful if unfulfilling adaptation of bestselling novel

Movie review.

In 2018, retired zoologist Delia Owens, the author of the bestselling 1984 memoir “Cry of the Kalahari,” published her first novel at the age of 69. “Where the Crawdads Sing” is set on the North Carolina coast in the 1950s and ‘60s, threading romance and murder mystery through the life story of a young, isolated woman, Kya, who grows up abandoned in the marsh. The story is a bit far-fetched, the characterizations broad, but there’s a beauty in Owens’ description of Kya’s relationship to the natural world. Her derisive nickname, “the Marsh Girl,” ultimately becomes her strength.

“Where the Crawdads Sing” has become a legitimate publishing phenomenon, one of the bestselling books of all time, despite a controversy bubbling in Owens’ past — a connection to the murder of a suspected animal poacher in Zambia. Reese Witherspoon bestowed the book with her book club blessing, and as she has done with other titles from her club, like “Big Little Lies,” Witherspoon has produced the film adaptation of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” written by Lucy Alibar, directed by Olivia Newman and starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as the heroine, Kya.

The film is easily slotted into the Southern Gothic courtroom drama subgenre — it’s like “A Time to Kill” with a feminine touch. While the nature of adaptation requires compression and elision, the film dutifully tells the story that fans of the book will turn out to see brought to life on the big screen. But in checking off all the plot points, the movie version loses what makes the book work, which is the time we spend with our heroine, Kya.

Kya is a tricky protagonist whose life story requires a certain suspension of disbelief. Abandoned by her mother (Ahna O’Reilly) and siblings escaping the drunken abuse of her father (Garret Dillahunt), who later disappears, young Kya (Jojo Regina) survives on her own, selling mussels to the proprietor of the local bait and tackle shop, Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.). His wife, Mabel (Michael Hyatt), takes pity on Kya and offers her some clothes and food donations, but it’s an exceedingly tough existence, something that the film does not manage to fully convey.

As a teen, Kya (Edgar-Jones) forms a friendship with a local boy, Tate (Taylor John Smith), who teaches her to read, and though their relationship turns romantic, he ultimately leaves her for college. Abandoned once again, she seeks companionship with popular local cad Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). It’s his death, from a fall at the rickety fire tower, that sees Kya on trial in the town of Barkley Cove, which ultimately becomes a referendum on how she’s been harshly judged over the years by the townspeople.

The only reason Kya works in the book is the amount of time the reader spends with her in the marsh, understanding the tactics she uses to get by, and getting to know the natural world in the way that she does, observing the patterns and life cycles of animals, insects and plants. The deep knowledge of her environment and ad hoc education from Tate helps Kya overcome poverty, as she publishes illustrated books of local shells, plants and birds. But in the film, which sacrifices getting to know her in order to prioritize the more scandal-driven twists and turns, Kya comes off as somewhat silly, a bit easy to laugh at in her naiveté and guilelessness.

There’s also the matter of plausibility, and the shininess with which this rough, wild world has been rendered by Newman and cinematographer Polly Morgan. The marsh (shot on location in Louisiana) is captured with a crisp, if perfunctory beauty, but it’s hard to buy English rose Edgar-Jones in her crisp blouses and clean jeans as the near-feral naturalist who has been brutally cast out by society. Everything’s just too pretty, a Disneyland version of the marsh.

The whole world feels sanded-down and spit-shined within in an inch of its life, lacking any grime or grit that might make this feel authentic, and that extends to the storytelling as well. It feels exceedingly rushed, as the actors hit their marks and deliver their monologues with a sense of obligation to moving the plot along rather than developing character. Hyatt, as Mabel, and David Strathairn, who plays Kya’s lawyer, Tom Milton, are the only actors who deliver grounded performances that feel like real people — everyone else feels like a two-dimensional version of an archetype spouting the necessary backstory or subtext to keep the plot churning forward.

Though it is faithful, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is lacking the essential character and storytelling connective tissue that makes a story like this work — an adaptation such as this cannot survive on plot alone.

With Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, David Strathairn. Directed by Olivia Newman. 125 minutes. Rated PG-13 for sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault. Opens July 15 at multiple theaters.

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Where the Crawdads Sing review: a bland murder mystery

For a film that takes such great pains to immerse viewers in the environment of one specific corner of the United States, Where the Crawdads Sing is shockingly bland. Adapted from Delia Owens’ best-selling 2018 novel, the new film explores the life of a young woman who is forced to raise herself in a marsh in North Carolina. The film, which takes place throughout the 1950s and 1960s, spends a considerable amount of time discussing and showcasing the murky wetland that emerges as its protagonist’s unlikely home.

A suspicious death

A difficult life, a disappointing mystery.

However, Where the Crawdads Sing never truly takes advantage of its backwoods setting. Even when a shocking murder in the film’s central marsh threatens to turn the life of its young heroine upside down, Where the Crawdads Sing remains surprisingly unimaginative, and its refusal to commit to the darker gothic elements of its story renders the film lifeless. Consequently, what could have been a moody and immersive murder mystery instead ends up feeling more like a safe cross between a late-era Nicholas Sparks adaptation and an uninspired, psychologically thin character study.

Where the Crawdads Sing follows Catherine “Kya” Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones from the Hulu  series Normal People ), a young woman who is placed under arrest for the suspected murder of Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson) in the film’s opening prologue. After a kind-hearted lawyer (David Strathairn) subsequently offers to represent her, Kya quickly finds herself in the middle of a trial that has the power to determine her entire future. From that point on, Where the Crawdads Sing adopts a multi-timeline structure, one that allows it to explore Kya’s life leading up to her arrest while frequently cutting back to the events of her present-day trial.

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Through the film’s lengthy flashback sequences, we are given glimpses into Kya’s difficult childhood and the years she spent living under the thumb of her abusive father (Garret Dillahunt). After her father unexpectedly abandons her, the film follows Kya as she is forced to learn how to survive on her own in the unforgiving marsh she calls home. Where the Crawdads Sing  then picks up with Kya years later when she begins to attract the attention of not only a handsome young man named Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith) but also Harris Dickinson’s Chase Andrews, the very man whose death will send her present-day life spiraling into chaos.

Between its central murder, unique marshland setting, and potentially tense courtroom subplot, Where the Crawdads Sing has all the necessary ingredients to be an involving, psychologically dark murder mystery. However, the film itself is oddly lighter, both visually and tonally, than its premise would have you believe. Its approach to violence ends up feeling particularly lacking, with director Olivia Newman willing to depict the various horrific acts that are perpetrated against Kya by the men around her but not the payback that she is justifiably willing to unleash when the need arises.

The film’s strange attitude toward its violence is only made more apparent by its reluctance to truly lean into the darker aspects of its story. The marsh that Edgar-Jones’ Kya calls home is brightly lit throughout most of the film, which robs the environment of its potentially gothic atmosphere. Newman, instead, chooses to shoot Where the Crawdads Sing ’s numerous marsh sequences as if the environment had been pulled out of a fairytale, with light streaming in from all directions and flowers blooming everywhere you look. It’s a choice that makes the film’s overall aesthetic feel incongruous with its undeniably grim story.

Lucy Alibar’s flashback-heavy script, meanwhile, succeeds at turning Where the Crawdads Sing into a comprehensive portrait of its protagonist’s life, but it also forces the film to move at an unbearably languid pace. After diving right into the present-day, investigative side of its story, Where the Crawdads Sing goes on to spend most of its runtime in the past, following Edgar-Jones’ Kya as she develops the skills that’ll enable her to live on her own and the relationships that’ll turn her life into an emotionally exhausting mess. Unfortunately, the film’s intense focus on Kya’s past also leads to the courtroom scenes that she shares with Strathairn’s Tom feeling like footnotes in Where the Crawdads Sing ’s story.

That especially becomes the case during the film’s second act, which introduces Smith’s Tate and Dickinson’s Chase as well as the fundamentally different romantic relationships that Kya forms with both of them over time. It’s in this section that Where the Crawdads Sing becomes a drawn-out romantic melodrama that, despite Edgar-Jones’ palpable chemistry with both Smith and Dickinson, only serves to further highlight the monotonous nature of the film’s plot.

The few emotionally affecting moments that Where the Crawdads Sing does deliver all come from Edgar-Jones’ capable performance as Kya. Despite being forced to say multiple lines that, frankly, work better in a book than they do in a film, Edgar-Jones still manages to make Kya’s strength and insecurities feel real. She brings a quiet steadiness to her character that not only adds further authenticity to the film’s characterization of her but also makes it easy to buy into some of the more questionable or difficult decisions that she is forced to make throughout it.

The fact that she manages to do so in a film that so often feels like it is running on autopilot is a testament to Edgar-Jones’ increasingly obvious abilities as a performer. Unlike its lead star though, Where the Crawdads Sing fails to bring the intensity that its story that it so dearly requires. The film doesn’t fully commit to any of the aspects of its plot or setting that could have helped it craft a clearer identity for itself, and its disinterest in Kya’s courtroom experiences only makes everything that happens throughout it feel all the more inconsequential.

Therefore, while it works as a showcase for Daisy Edgar-Jones, her performance isn’t enough to stop Where the Crawdads Sing from getting lost in the weeds.

Where the Crawdads Sing hits theaters on Friday, July 15.

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In 1954, legendary sci-fi author Richard Matheson released his postapocalyptic epic I Am Legend, about a lone human survivor in a world overrun by vampire-like beings. The story has been adapted for film three times, first in 1964 as The Last Man on Earth and again in 1971 as The Omega Man.

But more recently, Will Smith starred in I Am Legend in 2007. Despite the fact that the third adaptation seemingly had a definitive ending, Warner Bros. is moving forward with I Am Legend 2, and Smith is expected to reprise his role as Robert Neville.

The parade of summer movies continue on Netflix as the calendar turns to June. After the success of Jennifer Lopez's Atlas, Netflix will see if they have another winner in Hit Man. Directed by Richard Linklater, Hit Man stars Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, a college professor who stumbles into a job working as an undercover hit man for the New Orleans Police Department. Hit Man has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, so let's see if it leads to a large viewership.

Beyond the splashy titles, Netflix has thousands of other movies to stream, many of which are quite underrated. Below, we selected five under-the-radar movies to stream in June. Our picks include a sports documentary about a football icon, an erotic thriller, and a heartwarming adventure film. Dark Waters (2019)

The Hunger Games will return in two years. Lionsgate announced that a new Hunger Games prequel movie, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, will arrive in 2026. The feature film news comes hours after Suzanne Collins revealed that her next Hunger Games novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, will be released in 2025.

Francis Lawrence, the director of four Hunger Games films, is in talks to direct. Color Force's Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson will produce Sunrise on the Reaping.

15 Best Movies Like Where the Crawdads Sing

• Where the Crawdads Sing offers a unique blend of drama, romance, and mystery in a historical Southern setting.
• The film has a one-of-a-kind storyline with popular appeal despite mixed reviews from critics.
• Leading performances and character-driven plot twists keep the audience engaged in this captivating murder mystery.

In an era of sequels, reboots, and spinoffs, movies like Where the Crawdads Sing offer a nice respite from Hollywood blockbusters with their fascinating plots and stunning visuals. The 2022 film is set in the 1950s-60s American South and follows Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a young woman from the swamps of North Carolina who becomes embroiled in a mysterious murder. Blending drama, romance, and mystery into one story, Where the Crawdads Sing told a unique coming-of-age story with a historical backdrop. Based on Delia Owens' best-selling novel of the same name, the film managed to deftly balance a range of tones from intrigue to outright terror.

Though critics weren't sold on the film, Where the Crawdads Sing garnered an impressive audience response on Rotten Tomatoes, and it was clear that the one-of-a-kind story had popular appeal. The cast of Where the Crawdads Sing only served to elevate the material, and the character-driven narrative had enough twists and turns to keep things engaging throughout. While there was a distinct uniqueness to the movie's plot and visual execution, plenty of movies like Where the Crawdads Sing have dotted the cinematic landscape and tell their own tales of dramatic mystery.

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The upcoming film Where the Crawdads Sing features an ensemble cast who appeared in fascinating TV shows and movies like Normal People.

Snow Falling On Cedars (1999)

A japanese american man is accused of murder.

Long before movies like Where the Crawdads Sing were popular, Snow Falling on Cedars , based on the award-winning David Guterson novel of the same name, dealt with similar themes. Set in the Pacific Northwest in 1950, the story follows a Japanese American fisherman who is put on trial for the murder of his neighbor. Like Kya, Kabuo Miyamoto (Rick Yune) is treated as lesser than by his peers , and the movie tackles tough topics like racism in post-war America.

At the center of the courtroom drama is also a sweeping romance with Ethan Hawke as a reporter looking into the case surrounding Kabuo who also had a romance in the past with Kabuo's wife. The foggy environs of Puget Sound offer a stark visual contrast to the swamps of North Carolina, but the eerie tone is present throughout the forgotten '90s thriller.

Knives Out (2019)

Benoit blanc investigates a family murder.

Making the murder mystery movie popular again, Knives Out launched a brand-new cinematic franchise. After a famous novelist is murdered, detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) investigates the writer's shady family who all have sinister motives.

Among the various colorful characters of the family, the writer's nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) is revealed to know more about the case than she is letting on. Knives Out features several of the same themes as Where the Crawdads Sing, most importantly the murder mystery. Both movies keep the viewer in the dark until the final reveal .

Unlike Where the Crawdads Sing , Knives Out uses humor to get its point across, making the murder mystery less scary and more playful. It also features a wonderful supporting cast that includes Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michael Shannon. It spawned a sequel, Glass Onion , with a third Benoit Blanc mystery on the way.

Murder On The Orient Express (2017)

Hercule poirot investigates a death on a train.

Adapted from the best-selling Agatha Christie book , Murder on the Orient Express revived the classic novel with a modern cinematic flare. Detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) investigates a grisly murder aboard the world-famous trans-continental train.

When one of the passengers is found dead during the commute, it becomes obvious another passenger is responsible with the brilliant detective searching through the many motivations. It is another star-studded mystery with the likes of Johnny Depp, Olivia Coleman, Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, and others.

As with most movies like Where The Crawdads Sing, Murder on the Orient Expres s dedicates itself to its mystery and doesn't get sidetracked by much else . Slowly but surely, information is revealed, which has the viewers desperately trying to piece together what really happened. Though a bit more procedural than Where the Crawdads Sing , the Branagh-directed adaptation nevertheless finds a way to be shocking in its own right.

Marrowbone (2017)

Siblings cover up their mother's death.

Though Where the Crawdads Sing mixed in subtle horror elements, the psychological thriller Marrowbone embraces the horrific much more openly. In 1960s Maine, the mysterious Marrowbone family must cover up the death of their mother in order to retain ownership of the family estate.

However, their secrets soon give way to something more sinister as they are haunted by an unknown presence in the massive manor. Notable stars like Mia Goth, Anya Taylor-Joy, and George MacKay make up the cast, and the young stars are reminiscent of Where the Crawdads Sing 's ensemble.

Though a supernatural horror story, Marrowbone also subtly ratchets up the tension, and the picturesque period locations are as visually stunning as those in Where the Crawdads Sing . It makes for an effective setting to deliver the scares and craft an intriguing mystery.

Lost Girls (2020)

Amy ryan searches for her missing daughter.

Women-centric true-crime stories are abundant, but the film Lost Girls used the real-life narrative from Robert Kolker's book to explore failures in the criminal justice system. Oscar nominee Amy Ryan stars as Mari Gilbert whose daughter goes missing.

After the police fail to uncover anything she takes it upon herself to find her child and stumbles across multiple unsolved murders of women. Lost Girls focuses on the importance of unsolved crimes, especially those involving women and sex workers.

It makes for a powerful story within the intriguing mystery in which more is revealed as Mari continues to peel back the layers. While darker than Where The Crawdads Sing, the same themes are present including, murder, betrayal, and the hunt for the truth in the face of impossible odds . Lost Girls is equal parts haunting and jaw-dropping.

The Girl On The Train (2016)

Emily blunt becomes obsessed with strangers.

Much like how Where the Crawdads Sing was fast-tracked to the big screen after the success of the novel, The Girl on the Train brought Paula Hawkins' best-selling novel to life. Emily Blunt stars in the adaptation as Rachel, a woman who sees the same couple as she passes their home during her daily train commute. However, when she witnesses something in one of these communities, she is pulled into a dark and twisting mystery.

The Girl on the Train 's greatest strength is its building eeriness, which makes it akin to Where the Crawdads Sing in tone . It also focuses mostly on Rachel instead of an ensemble cast, much like Kya and her own journey and self-discovery. Both movies are spearheaded by strong female leads and focus on the importance of finding the truth, no matter the consequences.

The Little Things (2021)

Denzel washington and rami malek investigate a serial killer.

Though Where the Crawdads Sing used its rural setting as a perfect backdrop, 2021's The Little Things showed that urban environments were still ripe for a gripping thriller story. While in Los Angeles on an evidence-gathering mission, a veteran cop (Denzel Washington) finds himself assisting in the hunt for a vicious serial killer. When he and the younger detective (Rami Maleck) zero in on a suspect (Jared Leto), the frustration over closing the case begins to push them to dark places.

While The Little Things focuses on the bureaucratic procedures of big city policing, it has the same undertones as Where The Crawdads Sing. There's an ominous feeling as the case continues to escalate , and there is a claustrophobic vibe as the city closes in. Uncomfortable to watch, the twists continue up into the film's last moments.

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Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil (1997)

A murder mystery in the heart of new orleans' upper society.

John Berendt's landmark true-crime book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil captured the Southern Gothic essences of Savannah Georgia, and the film mimicked its style excellently. A young journalist (John Cusack) travels to Savannah to cover the city's annual Christmas festivities and submerges himself in the town's culture and true crime.

When a popular and wealthy local (Kevin Spacey) is accused of murder, it becomes clear there are some dark truths to be revealed. Movies like Where the Crawdads Sing often rely on contrived fictional situations to get their message across, but Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil used true stories to offer its twisted story.

Ranging from strangely humorous to nightmarish and grisly, the two films overlap in their tones and Southern Gothic visual style . Director Clint Eastwood does a terrific job of creating a unique and entertaining community in which the story evolves.

The Woman In The Window (2021)

Amy adams witnesses a murder.

A.J. Finn's novel The Woman in the Window was ripe for adaptation, and it joined a growing roster of movies like Where the Crawdads Sing that analyze crime from the female perspective. Anna (Amy Adams) is a woman with agoraphobia living an isolated life in her apartment.

After she believes she witnessed a murder in the house across the street, Anna attempts to uncover the truth which leads to her questioning her own sanity. Like Where The Crawdads Sing, the strong performances in The Woman in the Window are its anchor with a strong cast that includes Julianne Moore, Brian Tyree Henry, Wyatt Russell, and Gary Oldman.

Both Kya and Anna are outcasts watching the rest of the world from the sidelines , horrified at what they witness but desperate to piece together the truth of what they've seen.

George Washington (2000)

A group of young friends face a tragedy together.

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of Where the Crawdads Sing is its coming-of-age elements, and the indie darling George Washington tackled similar ideas. Set in rural North Carolina, a tight-knit group of young kids is shattered when one of their own is accidentally killed and they decide to cover it up. As they deal with the aftermath, it sends them on their own paths of redemption.

Though not nearly as cinematic as the big-budgeted Where the Crawdads Sing , George Washington uses its rural Southern backdrop as the perfect stage for coming-of-age drama . Both films deal with underserved youth and tackle the tragic consequences of mistakes that get way out of hand, even if George Washington is much more realistic in its execution. Though he is now known for movies like Pineapple Express and the Halloween reboot movies , David Gordon Green made a stunning directorial debut with this movie.

Dark Places (2015)

Charlize theron revisits a family tragedy.

Author Gillian Flynn has become a popular source of content for movies and TV, with Gone Girl being her most iconic crime story. While Dark Places has never reached that level of popularity, it remains an absorbing thriller.

Decades after her family was brutally murdered and her brother was arrested for the crime, Libby (Charlize Theron) is forced to revisit the traumatic night of her family's murder when investigators reopen the case and start to ask hard questions.

Noted for featuring yet another strong female character from Flynn's oeuvre, Dark Places is full of twists and haunting revelations that have the viewer questioning the lengths people will go to in order to keep their secrets. Much like Where The Crawdads Sing, both movies are hauntingly dark and thrilling to watch with a particularly strong eye towards psychological chills .

Rebecca (2020)

Lily james looks into the past relationship of her new husband.

Though Where the Crawdads Sing is a modern mystery novel, it does share similarities to some older works of the genre that have received modern film adaptations. Based on the classic novel by Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca follows Mrs. de Winter, a new bride (Lily James) who moves into her husband's (Armie Hammer) estate but finds herself living in the shadow of his titular first wife. Mrs. de Winter begins to question not only her husband but herself, as she's haunted by her predecessor's legacy.

Serving as the blueprint for movies like Where the Crawdads Sing , du Maurier's tale has a lot to say about marriage from the female perspective. Though the 2020 adaptation of Rebecca changed things from the novel , it maintained the haunting atmosphere that makes it a perfect companion to Where the Crawdads Sing .

Beloved (1998)

Oprah winfrey is haunted by the memory of her child.

Finally bringing Toni Morrison's masterpiece Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to life, Beloved is an allegorical take on many of the same themes covered in Where the Crawdads Sing . Sethe (Oprah Winfrey) is tortured by her past as a formerly enslaved person and haunted by the seeming reincarnation of her lost child, Beloved (Thandiwe Newton).

It forces her to grapple with her grief while also attempting to move on with her life. Directed by Oscar winner Jonathan Demme, Beloved is a complex movie that is not easy to categorize into one genre but hits certain similar beats as Where the Crawdads Sing .

Both films deal with characters who have been ostracized from society , and while Kya is symbolically haunted, Sethe is haunted in a more literal sense. Though Beloved is a largely forgotten box office bomb, it helped pave the way for movies like Where the Crawdads Sing .

A Mouthful Of Air (2021)

Amanda seyfried deals with childhood trauma.

The psychology of trauma was the heart of Amy Koppelman's novel, and the adaptation of A Mouthful of Air explored the same ideas. Julie Davis (Amanda Seyfried) is a bestselling children's author who writes encouraging stories to teach children to face their fears. However, when she faces the birth of her daughter, she realizes that she is still not facing some of the trauma of her own childhood.

One common thread dealt with in both movies is hidden and repressed childhood memories that won't go away . Kya of Where the Crawdads Sing buried much of her childhood in order to cope as an adult, similarly to Julie. Both women are confronted with their trauma and hidden pasts and must overcome them if they want to move forward, though Julie's journey isn't nearly as eerie as Kya's.

The Starling (2021)

Melissa mccarthy struggles with grief.

While the word "heartwarming" usually wouldn't be used to describe movies like Where the Crawdads Sing , 2021's The Starling fits that description. Following a tragic loss, Lily (Melissa McCarthy) deals with her husband being committed to a psychiatric facility. As she deals with him and ignores her own grief, she soon finds herself fighting and subsequently befriending a starling that has taken to nesting in her backyard.

The Starling focuses on the importance of reopening one's heart , as does Where The Crawdads Sing. Themes of love, acceptance, and grief are present in both films, but The Starling uses a subtle sense of humor to get its point across with none of the creepiness of Where the Crawdads Sing . It also features a solid dramatic role for McCarthy as well as a strong supporting cast, including Chris O'Dowd, Kevin Kline, and Timothy Olyphant.