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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.

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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’ 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

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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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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’ 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.

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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: 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.

Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith) in Columbia Pictures' WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.

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.

Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) in Columbia Pictures' WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.

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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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

Where The Crawdads Sing Review

A movie that should’ve been uglier..

Where The Crawdads Sing is in theaters on July 15, 2022.

Where The Crawdads Sing is a strange case of a film made marginally more interesting by the circumstances of its creation. Part period romance and part legal drama, this oddly structured literary adaptation has little going for it beyond its lead actress, but a quick glance at its story and at the life of Delia Owens — the author and conservationist who wrote the book of the same name — reveals a potentially unsavory point of view on the crime that sets the plot in motion. However, the filmmakers don’t quite know what to do with this information (which, in the novel, can’t help but read as boastful), so the resulting perspective is lopsided at best, hesitant at worst, and robs the movie of a raw and ugly narrative power.

The broad strokes are as follows: set in the marshlands of North Carolina in the 1960s, the film opens with the police discovering the body of town quarterback Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). Circumstantial evidence points towards recluse Catherine Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones), nicknamed Kya by her family, but dubbed “Marsh Girl” by unkind townsfolk. Gossip spreads, and retired defendant Tom Milton (David Strathairn) decides to take up the case, but not before he listens to Kya narrate her life story, of which we see every single major detail, from her childhood abandonment, to her blossoming teenage romance with a boy named Tate (Taylor John Smith), to how she and Chase eventually cross paths.

Despite the story being framed as the unraveling of a mystery, the actual details of the case are all hastily shoved into the film’s final few minutes, with bits of information provided just in time for reveals with little impact. Instead, what we’re given is a play-by-play of Kya’s life in ways that rarely hold relevance to the trial, other than vague gesturing towards the way she’s viewed by the fictitious town of Barkley Cove (of which we see very little). There’s little interplay between the two halves of its non-linear structure, and even the portraiture of Kya it manages to paint is rather rote, edited with more care for information than for mood, emotion, or rhythm. While director Olivia Newman and cinematographer Polly Morgan manage to capture the poetry of the marsh, with a sense of wistful nostalgia, their establishing and transitionary shots of nature are about the only things that don’t unfold mechanically. Even the story’s gendered circumstances — of how a potentially wronged Kya might be painted by society, in contrast to a beloved football star — are swiftly brushed over.

If the film has a major on-screen strength, it’s Edgar-Jones’ conception of Kya, as a wounded, lonely artist with an academic passion for flora and fauna. However, her existence as a misunderstood author-self-insert can’t help but summon real-life details past the movie’s fourth wall. Brace yourself. Real-life conservationist Owens is wanted for questioning in a televised 1996 killing in Zambia, of a man flimsily accused of poaching, whose shooting death was broadcast as part of an ABC documentary. It is, for all intents and purposes, a snuff film, and while Owens maintains total non-involvement in the matter, the details of her novel (and now, its big screen adaptation) make for an unsettling companion piece.

What's your favorite mystery movie?

The real-life and fictional deaths have different settings, but what they have in common is a dedicated nature lover thrust into the spotlight under accusations of murder. What makes this all the more unsavory are the conclusions the book and movie eventually come to, but given the latter’s rushed framing of its fictitious case, it spends very little time ruminating on the central premise of a misunderstood girl claiming innocence and fighting for her survival. So, the film ends up avoiding the opportunity to draw on something real, even if that “something” is starkly discomforting.

You’d rather see an objectionable piece of art than a boring one, but alas, Where The Crawdads Sing is overtly the latter, playing out like a meandering, birth-to-death Wikipedia biopic without the excuse of being based on a real person. Its eventual ruminations on resilience and survival are knee-capped by trepidation, since it refuses to get its hands dirty by plunging them into ethical complications. What’s left is only a broad, misplaced, didactic sense of idealism, instead of what ought to have been a much more challenging story — or at the very least, a more offensive one, if only to elicit some kind of emotional response.

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A mechanical period romance sandwiched between a dimensionless legal drama, Where The Crawdads Sing is only accidentally interesting if you know the controversy surrounding its author, Delia Owens. However, as an adaptation of her novel, the movie is too plain and indecisive to make a lasting impact.

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Where the crawdads sing, common sense media reviewers.

Standout performances in uneven, trauma-filled adaptation.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Explores importance of nature, self-education, and

Kya is observant, a quick learner, a dedicated nat

Two of Kya's few friends are Jumpin' and his wife,

Children hear their father beating their mother an

Two love scenes: one quick, the other a bit longer

Insult language: "marsh girl," "White trash," "rat

High school- and college-age characters drink beer

Positive Messages

Explores importance of nature, self-education, and being a lifelong learner. Depicts the many reasons people need companionship and love. Also looks at the lasting impact of trauma and abandonment and the loneliness of isolation. Themes include empathy and perseverance.

Positive Role Models

Kya is observant, a quick learner, a dedicated naturalist. She's incredibly smart and talented. Tate is generous with his time and knowledge. He's smart and loves the marsh as much as Kya, but he also breaks her heart. Jumpin' and Mabel are selfless and helpful.

Diverse Representations

Two of Kya's few friends are Jumpin' and his wife, Mabel, the movie's only Black characters of note. They're kind, generous, loving to Kya. Although their involvement in Kya's life is less stereotypical than it was in the book, they can still be considered examples of the "magical Negro" cliché -- i.e., characters of color who exist solely to aid White protagonists. Kya herself is a self-educated "genius" who doesn't attend traditional school.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Children hear their father beating their mother and siblings. A woman with visible bruises leaves her family. Siblings who are similarly hurt also leave, one by one. A father slaps his young daughter. A dead body is shown a few times. Intimate-partner violence continues in the next generation when Kya's former boyfriend stalks her menacingly and commits sexual assault and attempts to rape her, calling her "his."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two love scenes: one quick, the other a bit longer. Both show men's bare chests and a woman's bare shoulders and back. Two different couples are shown flirting, holding hands, kissing. One couple is about to have sex but stop before it happens.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Insult language: "marsh girl," "White trash," "rat girl," "cooties." "Damn," "damn you," "Christ sakes," "whoring," "goddamn." A Black man is called "boy" by a younger White man.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

High school- and college-age characters drink beer. Adults drink at a restaurant. Kya's father drinks to excess and acts like he's self-medicating to treat unspecified mental illness.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Where the Crawdads Sing is a romantic mystery/drama based on Delia Owens' bestselling 2018 novel. It's set in the coastal marshes of 1950s-'60s North Carolina, where young Kya is dubbed "Marsh Girl" because she lives in near-complete isolation. As a young adult, Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ), who doesn't trust the nearby townspeople, is accused of murder. Like the book, the film deals with heavy subjects, including child abandonment, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. The language is largely insults and uses of "damn" and "goddamn"; a White man also calls a Black man "boy." Violent scenes involve disturbing acts of intimate-partner abuse, child abuse, and sexual assault. A character is alcohol dependent and has an unspecified mental health condition. Kya experiences two pivotal romantic relationships, both of which include kissing and love scenes. The movie's depiction of two Black characters, while better than the book's, still plays into the "magical Negro" cliché, in which a character of color exists only to help a White main character. Issues related to trauma and isolation are threaded throughout the story, but so are the importance of nature, conservation, and education, giving parents and teens plenty to talk about after watching. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (26)
Kids say (36)

Based on 26 parent reviews

Excellent story but contains violence and sexual abuse

Great movie, for adults., what's the story.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING is based on the bestselling historical romantic mystery novel written by naturalist Delia Owens. Set in a fictional North Carolina coastal town, the story takes place in the 1950s and '60s. In 1952, a young Kya Clark (Jojo Regina) witnesses her abused mother hurriedly leave the family, with the rest of the children following in her footsteps. Alone with her father ( Garret Dillahunt ), who's physically abusive and alcohol-dependent, Kya grows used to being alone in the marsh where her family's cabin sits. When her father also leaves, Kya learns to fend for herself with a little help from empathetic general store owners Jumpin' (Sterling Macer Jr.) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt). As she gets older, Kya lasts literally one day at the public school before bullying kids chase the "Marsh Girl" away. Years later, local high schooler Tate Walker ( Taylor John Smith ) teaches a now teenage Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ) to read and write. After Tate leaves for college, Kya starts a relationship with popular quarterback Chase Andrews ( Harris Dickinson ), wooed by his promises of marriage and stability. When Chase is found dead in the marsh in 1969, Kya is accused of murder and defended by a local attorney ( David Strathairn ) who believes the townsfolk should feel guilty for mistreating Kya.

Is It Any Good?

The beauty of the natural setting and the central love story aren't quite enough to save this adaptation from the slippery slope of melodrama, but Edgar-Jones gives a standout performance. The genre-bending page-to-screen drama is like a classic tragic romance set in the American South, with young Kya an almost Dickensian figure. The cruelties that young Kya must endure are nearly unwatchable: Her entire family abandons her, her father slaps her, the other kids taunt her. Later, audiences will cheer as Kya grows into a young woman who observes all the fauna and flora of the marsh with joy and admiration (and as the lovely and selfless Tate takes an interest in tutoring her and clearly falls in love). But Kya's bad luck ultimately continues, and she ends up not with brilliant scientist-in-training Tate but with predatory and deceitful Chase, who's more interested in conquest than true love.

Screenwriter Lucy Alibar's adaptation makes the murder case against Kya the framing device that spawns flashbacks to the romances, tragedies, and family drama. But, unlike the book, the movie version of Where the Crawdads Sing doesn't fully explore each of those aspects of the story. The court proceedings in particular don't explore the details that make the eventual revelations pack an extra punch. What director Olivia Newman does explore is the way that darkness lurks just beneath the lush landscape. For every feather or shell that Kya collects, there's an ugly secret, a foul rumor, a moment of abuse to witness. It's no wonder Kya prefers the marsh to the town, the kindness of Jumpin' and Mabel to the scrutiny of Chase's friends. Kya, like the animals she's observed her whole life, knows when to shrink into herself as a survival mechanism. And while the movie can be overly sentimental, there are some lovely sequences, usually between Edgar-Jones and Smith. It also has notable messages about the importance of nature, love, and treating the disenfranchised with respect and dignity.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Where the Crawdads Sing . Is it necessary to the story? Do different kinds of violence impact viewers differently?

How do trauma and substance use play a role in the story? What are some character strengths that Kya and Tate display? Who do you consider a role model ?

Discuss what role the setting plays in the movie. Why is nature so important to Kya?

If you've read the book, talk about any differences between the book and movie. What do you think about aspects of the book that the movie added or changed?

How does the movie treat sex and consent? Parents, talk to your teens about sex, consent, and sexual assault.

Movie Details

In theaters : July 15, 2022
On DVD or streaming : September 13, 2022
Cast : Daisy Edgar-Jones , Harris Dickinson , Taylor John Smith , Garret Dillahunt
Director : Olivia Newman
Inclusion Information : Female directors
Studio : Sony Pictures Entertainment
Genre : Drama
Topics : Book Characters , Science and Nature
Character Strengths : Empathy , Perseverance
Run time : 125 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault
Last updated : July 2, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ review: How does it compare to the book?

The film has brought delia owens’ bestselling novel to life in the most tragically beautiful way.

Daisy Edgar-Jones attends the premiere of “Where the Crawdads Sing” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

By Lindsey Harper

If you see “Where the Crawdads Sing,” please be prepared to have your heart ripped out and completely stomped on again and again. The film has brought Delia Owens’ bestselling novel to life in the most tragically beautiful way.

The movie follows Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones, who recently starred in “Under The Banner of Heaven” ) as she learns to fend for herself in the marshlands of North Carolina after her family abandons her.
The film bounces back and forth between past and present, with Kya on trial in the present for the murder of local boy Chase Andrews.
Rumors spread quickly about Kya the “marsh girl,” but the audience discovers what she’s actually like through flashbacks, as Kya opens herself to new experiences and creates relationships with sweet, tender-hearted Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith) and privileged yet powerful Chase (Harris Dickinson).

The good parts: “Where the Crawdads Sing” is simply a masterpiece. The cinematography, acting and plot are absolutely enthralling, and it left me hooked within the first 10 minutes.

The movie does a great job portraying the book’s sensitive topics of abuse, neglect, abandonment and rape in an extremely realistic way. You truly feel every emotion throughout this movie — whether you want to or not.
The film remains true to the book. While you don’t have to read the book before seeing the movie, you’ll love it all the more if you have. The characters and location are almost exactly how I pictured them to be in the novel. While I was afraid the actress cast as Kya was too “clean,” Edgar-Jones surprised me and played the role phenomenally — she contrasted Kya’s “marsh girl” title that was assigned to her by society with Kya’s beauty, smarts and unexpected grace.

The cast: Edgar-Jones’ role in Hulu’s “Normal People” as a generally unliked girl with an abusive father seems to have prepared her to play Kya. The actress properly portrays the character’s curiosity, wonder and vulnerability through her expressive brown eyes and mannerisms.

Sterling Macer Jr. is the perfect Jumpin’ — a kindhearted, protective and loving man who looks like he gives great hugs. Macer’s performance might make you wish he was your dad, which is the epitome of Jumpin’s character.
Harris Dickinson makes you absolutely hate his character’s guts, which means he played Chase Andrews perfectly. His thoughtless, slimy demeanor does the character justice.
David Strathairn smashed his role as Kya’s attorney out of the park. Reminiscent of Atticus Finch, Strathairn’s defending speech gives you the hope that he and Kya might just win the case after all.
The bad parts: This movie will give you puffy eyes and a runny nose from the tears that will run down your face. This is an extremely heavy and emotionally draining movie. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but rather a warning so that you know what you’re getting yourself into.
While some are calling the movie’s pacing “clunky” or “slow,” I felt the slower pace was necessary in order for the audience to truly understand Kya’s upbringing and to become invested in her character. Without it, I don’t think I would have been as heartbroken when she went through difficult circumstances. It also matched the vibe of the slow, Southern town the story took place in.

The bottom line: “Where the Crawdads Sing” is an incredibly gripping murder mystery and romance that has a plot unlike any other, with a great twist at the end. If you enjoy good acting, aesthetic cinematography and Taylor Swift , you will love this movie.

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Where the crawdads sing review: gorgeous visuals clash with storytelling issues.

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Book-to-movie adaptations can be notoriously difficult to nail. Get things right, and fans of the source material will sing its praises. Get things wrong, though, and the movie will become infamous. In the case of Where the Crawdads Sing , Olivia Newman's adaptation of Delia Owens' best-selling novel, there is a very good chance it will find itself in the former category when it arrives in theaters. The gorgeously-shot movie is incredibly faithful to the book and will no doubt delight those who have eagerly devoured its pages. However, as a movie, Where the Crawdads Sing stumbles a bit in its transition from page to screen, though it is aided by a great lead performance.

Picking up in 1969, the sleepy town of Barkley Cove, North Carolina is shaken by the apparent murder of golden boy Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). There is a shocking lack of evidence found at the crime scene, but rumors have already put a suspect on trial: The famed "Marsh Girl," a Barkley Cove legend who has been the subject of scorn for years. In reality, the Marsh Girl is Kya Clark ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ), a shy girl with a deep passion for nature. Turning back the clock several years, Where the Crawdads Sing digs into Kya's life, her relationship with the surrounding marsh, and whether she might be involved in Chase's untimely demise.

Related: Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris Review: Lesley Manville Shines In Wholesome 1950s Tale

Taylor John Smith and Daisy Edgar-Jones in Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing has been a book club favorite for years now, and as a result, its adaptation has some high expectations attached. Luckily, it is clear from almost the very beginning that Newman and her team have nothing but the utmost respect for the source material. Lucy Alibar has penned a screenplay that is filled with numerous details and lines lifted straight from the book, making this one of the most faithful adaptations in recent memory. To be sure, Where the Crawdads Sing makes some adjustments here and there, but they are relatively small. By filming on location, Newman is able to make the most of actual marshes in the South, and cinematographer Polly Morgan does an excellent job at showcasing these beautiful natural landscapes. In many ways, Where the Crawdads Sing really brings Kya's world to life in vivid fashion, including through the carefully detailed work of production designer Sue Chan.

However, there are places where the movie's devotion to the book causes it to run aground. Literally, in a way, as Where the Crawdads Sing holds some pacing issues. There are key moments in Kya's murder trial that should be filled with tension and suspense; instead, they lack the necessary urgency. On the specific topic of the trial, the movie suffers early on from jarring cuts between the past and the present. These get better as Chase's prominence in the plot increases, but the first portion of Where the Crawdads Sing can't seem to find a suitable balance between Kya's early life and her uneasy future. Additionally, in its attempt to bring as many book moments to life as possible, the movie finds itself grappling with a few awkward moments that, while reading fine on the page, don't exactly translate well to a visual medium.

Daisy Edgar-Jones in Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing 's greatest strength is Edgar-Jones (and Jojo Regina, who plays a younger Kya). Kya is a unique main character and Edgar-Jones does a great job in bringing her to life. Whether it is by expressing delighted wonderment over a gifted feather or retreating in on herself in the face of a potential death sentence, Edgar-Jones plays all sides of Kya with ease. Taylor John Smith takes on the pivotal role of Tate, Kya's first true friend. Armed with a kind smile and earnest disposition, Smith possesses all the charms Tate should have, and his chemistry with Edgar-Jones further sells their bond. As the more complicated Chase, Dickinson does a good job in gradually exposing the kind of man his character really is. Special credit should be given to Michael Hyatt and Sterling Mercer Jr. as Mabel and Jumpin, respectively; though their roles remain as sadly underwritten as they are in the book, they bring real heart to each and every one of their scenes.

Where the Crawdads Sing will surely appease fans of the book, and on some level, its adherence to the source material is to be commended. It is very clear the filmmaking team respects and appreciates the book. However, that passion doesn't entirely hide the cracks that emerge when transferring a story from one medium to another. The production itself and Edgar-Jones do much to bring this world to brilliant life. Ultimately, though, Where the Crawdads Sing is unable to soar like the birds Kya admires so much.

More: Watch The Where The Crawdads Sing Trailer

Where the Crawdads Sing releases in theaters Friday, July 15. It is 125 minutes long and rated PG-13 for sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault.

Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing is a dramatic mystery film directed by Olivia Newman (First Match, Chicago Fire) and based on the 2018 novel of the same name, set in the 1950s, the film centers around Catherine "Kya" Clark (Daisy-Edgar Jones), a girl abandoned at an early age who is forced to raise herself in the marshes of North Carolina, adapting entirely to the wilderness. After meeting a young boy named Tate Walker, who teaches her the ways of the world by lending her books and teaching her valuable skills, she can sustain herself. However, as Kya enters her late teen years, a whirlwind romance with a young quarterback somehow puts her on trial for murder. Kya will have to prove her innocence to continue living in a world she only now has begun to understand.

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Where the Crawdads Sing cast and crew on telling a story of isolation and nature

"What I feel like is not on film very often is women in nature," says executive producer Reese Witherspoon.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

Survival stories are as old as time — but more often than not they hone in on men alone in the wild.

Bucking this trend is what immediately grabbed executive producer Reese Witherspoon about Delia Owens ' novel Where the Crawdads Sing . Throughout her producing career, Witherspoon, a self-professed tomboy as a child, has gravitated toward stories of women in nature.

"What I feel like is not on film very often is women in nature," she says, while sitting down with Crawdads stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Taylor John Smith, as well as director Olivia Newman, for EW's Around the Table. "I remember when I read Wild how deeply resonant it was with me. Because I grew up in Nashville, Tenn., in the country, running around the creek with my brother and a bunch of the neighborhood boys. I'd pick up crawdads at the creek, or frogs, or snakes, or whatever, and that was my childhood."

"But then when I look at the movies out there that are women in nature, alone in nature also, not being saved by someone because they're scared in the woods, but literally thriving in nature, living through nature, connecting with nature, it's almost non-existent as a genre," she continues. "So, for me, Wild was like this incredible breakthrough moment where when I read Cheryl Strayed's novel, I was like, 'That's how connected women are in nature.'"

"I had the same feeling when I read Crawdads," Witherspoon concludes. "Delia's very clearly a woman who's very connected to animals, to the spiritual world, to the nature world, and that's the kind of stuff, if I was a little girl, I would want to see in movies, because that's who I was. I didn't live in a fancy apartment in New York and have a job at a magazine. I was just trying to figure out who I was in terms of existing and surviving. It's deeply resonant in that way."

Where the Crawdads Sing follows Kya (Edgar-Jones), also known as the "marsh girl," a young woman who has spent her adolescence alone in a North Carolina marsh, learning to survive and contend with the elements. When she's accused of the murder of local golden boy Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), her life and past — including the memories of her romance with Tate Walker (Smith) — come to the surface.

It was Kya's connection with nature and her ability to commune with that world that also drew Edgar-Jones and Newman to the story. Newman was particularly struck by the ways in which Kya's isolation might resonate with audiences after the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"There is something really relatable about how Kya manages a very lonely and solitary world, but manages to find a way not just to survive, but to thrive," she says. "That was what really struck me about her character: this is not just a survival tale. This is a tale of a girl who goes above and beyond expectation and surprises us at every turn with what she's capable of."

Edgar-Jones echoes this, citing Kya's resilience as something she latched onto. "One thing I love about her is how underestimated she is and, despite that, she thrives," she adds. "It's really amazing to see women represented in that way of being incredibly underestimated and yet still managing to push through. Ultimately, she thrives."

Watch the video above for more from the Crawdads theme. The film hits theaters July 15.

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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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When a Troubling Book Gets a Hollywood Makeover

A slick movie adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing doesn’t just sanitize the story; it obfuscates the questionable morality at the novel’s center.

A young girl in front of a shack in a still from 'Where the Crawdads Sing'

In the best-selling 2018 novel Where the Crawdads Sing , the author Delia Owens describes the marshlands surrounding a fictional North Carolina town vividly and reverently. They’re a dangerous setting teeming with wildlife, and they toughen up their human inhabitants, including the young Kya. Abandoned by her family, Kya endures one “stinky-hot” day after the next alone, living in a shack with “greenish-black veins of mildew … in every crevice.”

In the film adaptation, out in theaters today, the marshes look far from the “wasteland bog” Owens describes. The opening scenes feature a great blue heron rendered in CGI, guiding the camera through an apparently idyllic weekend-getaway destination, all lush green grass and untouched beaches. Kya’s shack may as well be an Airbnb furnished by Wayfair. And Kya herself, played as a child by Jojo Regina and as a teenager and young adult by Normal People ’s Daisy Edgar-Jones, seems to rarely touch mud: Her clothing is typically spotless, and her hair photoshoot-worthy. Indeed, no one seems to sweat in the southern heat.

Like many big-screen takes on popular novels, Where the Crawdads Sing has received the glossy Hollywood makeover. Directed by Olivia Newman ( First Match ), the movie softens the brutality of Kya’s world until it looks pleasing enough for Instagram. It treats the plot the same way. Though a murder mystery propels the narrative—as it does in the book—the script focuses on the melodrama of Kya’s romances over the crime for which she’s the primary suspect. That allows it to avoid the apparent moral justifications of the novel, in which Kya’s closeness to the land underscores her goodness, and her code of survival trumps human laws. The film also removes much of Owens’s esoteric language about Kya’s connection to wildlife, making the material feel like a Nicholas Sparks project. Such an approach usually flattens the original story, and that’s certainly happening here. But in Where the Crawdads Sing , streamlining Owens’s work has additional effects.

As The Atlantic ’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has reported , Owens is wanted for questioning as a possible witness, co-conspirator, and accessory regarding the 1990s murder of an alleged poacher in Zambia that was captured on camera for an ABC News documentary. The novel’s parallels, given that context, are striking: Kya is a devoted naturalist, much like the writer. She feels more comfortable living in the wild than among society—a claim that has also been made about Owens. Moreover, Owens emphasizes that Kya’s deep ties to her environment elevate her beyond the law. By treating the story as a soapy melodrama rather than an exploration of morality, the new film—whether deliberately or not—avoids addressing the righteousness of the book’s message.

Read: Where the Crawdads Sing author wanted for questioning in murder

The movie adaptation, produced by Reese Witherspoon, also simplifies a somewhat messy plot. The book awkwardly threads together two busy timelines that require a high suspension of disbelief: One begins in 1969, when the body of a local beloved cad named Chase is found in the marsh, and the bigoted townspeople suspect Kya of involvement. The second flashes back to Kya’s coming-of-age as the “Marsh Girl,” who survives against all odds, grows into a beautiful pariah, and publishes several celebrated books about the marshlands. Layered atop the bildungsroman–slash–murder mystery is a courtroom drama, wildlife commentary, and a cast of thinly drawn supporting characters.

But if the novel tried to be everything at once, the film focuses on the book’s most marketable element: Kya’s lustful dalliances with locals in her teenage years. Kya’s crushes and heartbreaks are some of the only parts of Where the Crawdads Sing that are close to believable. The film plays up her romances first with a boy named Tate (Taylor John Smith), and later, Chase (Harris Dickinson). The former is the dream boyfriend, sweet and bland and into nature. The other is a smarmy nightmare who can’t believe that Kya is able to identify species of scallops. In focusing on the love triangle, the film breezes past the ludicrousness of Kya’s story: that a little girl traumatized by her abandonment survived in a rusty shack with no running water or electricity, because look, she’s making out with Hunk No. 1 in a vortex of leaves!

Turning Kya’s story into a down-tempo YA romance unexpectedly gives Where the Crawdads Sing a new dimension. Of course the slick, golden-hour-soaked marsh looks perfect if the manic pixie marsh girl is living in a fantasy. And by giving her a voice-over and framing her flashbacks as stories she’s telling her lawyer, Tom Milton (an ever-dependable David Strathairn), the film raises other questions: Why does Kya, who has come to fear abandonment, risk getting to know anyone else? What is the appeal of human connection at all?

Yet the film’s script ultimately bounces between a knowing artificiality and a frustrating dutifulness. In a way, that’s apt for an adaptation of a novel with both an outlandish plot and a troubling backstory. If the film leaned all the way into its melodrama, it could have been something different: the rare mainstream, studio-produced summer romance made for female audiences, with rich imagery worthy of the big screen. But its source material’s blemishes were always going to be hard to avoid.

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.

hectordanielbuelna

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COMMENTS

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
Where the Crawdads Sing: Directed by Olivia Newman. With Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, David Strathairn. 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.
Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
8/10. A gripping romantic drama. Anurag-Shetty 19 September 2022. Where the Crawdads Sing is based on the novel of the same name, by Delia Owens. It tells the story of Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones). Kya who grows up alone in the woods of the deep south, is the prime suspect in a murder investigation.
Where the Crawdads Sing
Rated 4.5/5 Stars • Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 08/31/23 Full Review Brandon Richardson For the genre/type of movie, it is, Where the Crawdads Sing is pretty decent. Daisy Edgar-Jones was the ...
Where the Crawdads Sing movie review (2022)
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 ...
Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
Metascore. The bluntness of its messaging proves to be a bit of a detraction, but the fact remains that Where the Crawdads Sing is a heartfelt, and gorgeous picture, the kind which major studios used to make all the time, and now feel like a bit of an endangered species. Newman's film gets enough right to be just as solid as a summer ...
Where the Crawdads Sing (film)
Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2022 American mystery drama film based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Delia Owens.It was directed by Olivia Newman from a screenplay by Lucy Alibar and was produced by Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter. Daisy Edgar-Jones leads the cast, featuring Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., Jojo Regina, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna ...
'Where the Crawdads Sing' Review: A Compelling Wild-Child Tale
'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.
'Where the Crawdads Sing' Review: A Wild Heroine, a Soothing Tale
July 13, 2022. Where the Crawdads Sing. Directed by Olivia Newman. Drama, Mystery, Thriller. PG-13. 2h 5m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our ...
Movie Review: Where the Crawdads Sing
Movie Review: In Where the Crawdads Sing, a film adaptation of Delia Owens's runaway bestseller, a young North Carolina woman who's lived away from society is accused of murder. Daisy Edgar ...
Where the Crawdads Sing Review: Bestseller Becomes Glossy Summer Movie
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 ...
Where the Crawdads Sing
Full Review | Oct 3, 2022. Scott Tobias The Reveal (Substack) TOP CRITIC. The PG-13-ness of Where the Crawdads Sing buffs every rough edge off this story—the abuse, the abandonment, the betrayal ...
Where The Crawdads Sing Review
Where The Crawdads Sing is a strange case of a film made marginally more interesting by the circumstances of its creation. Part period romance and part legal drama, this oddly structured literary ...
'Where the Crawdads Sing' review:
Placing Daisy Edgar-Jones under the spotlight, "Where the Crawdads Sing" serves up a virtual symphony of chords - adapting a bestselling book that's part wild-child tale, part romance ...
Where the Crawdads Sing Movie Review
Budweiser. Parents need to know that Where the Crawdads Sing is a romantic mystery/drama based on Delia Owens' bestselling 2018 novel. It's set in the coastal marshes of 1950s-'60s North Carolina, where young Kya is dubbed "Marsh Girl" because she lives in near-complete isolation. As a young adult, Kya (Daisy Edgar….
Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
Where the Crawdads Sing. IMDb rating. The IMDb rating is weighted to help keep it reliable. Learn more. IMDb RATING. 7.2 / 10. 111K. YOUR RATING. Rate. User ratings. Filter by Country. Countries with the most ratings. United States United Kingdom Sweden Netherlands Canada. 7.4 Unweighted mean. More from this title. More to explore.
'Where the Crawdads Sing' review: How does the movie compare to the
The good parts: "Where the Crawdads Sing" is simply a masterpiece.The cinematography, acting and plot are absolutely enthralling, and it left me hooked within the first 10 minutes. The movie does a great job portraying the book's sensitive topics of abuse, neglect, abandonment and rape in an extremely realistic way.
Where The Crawdads Sing Review: Gorgeous Visuals Clash With
Where the Crawdads Sing releases in theaters Friday, July 15. It is 125 minutes long and rated PG-13 for sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault. However, as a movie, Where the Crawdads Sing stumbles a bit in its transition from page to screen, though it is aided by a great lead performance.
Where the Crawdads Sing
Maureen Lee Lenker. Published on July 13, 2022 10:00AM EDT. Survival stories are as old as time — but more often than not they hone in on men alone in the wild. Bucking this trend is what ...
Where The Crawdads Sing Reviews Are In, See What Critics Are Saying
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 ...
The Soapy Makeover of 'Where the Crawdads Sing'
July 15, 2022. In the best-selling 2018 novel Where the Crawdads Sing, the author Delia Owens describes the marshlands surrounding a fictional North Carolina town vividly and reverently. They're ...
Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
visual effects lead: Mr. X (as Jagadeesh Gajapathi) Manuel Rey Gonzalez. ... 2D artist: Crafty Apes (as Manuel Gonzalez) / digital compositor: Crafty Apes BR. Javier González Alonso. ... cg supervisor: Mr. X (as Javier Gonzales Alonso) Emma Gorbey.
'Where The Crawdads Sing' review: A faithful if unfulfilling adaptation
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
Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2018 coming-of-age murder mystery novel by American zoologist Delia Owens. The story follows two timelines that slowly intertwine. The first timeline describes the life and adventures of a young girl named Kya as she grows up isolated in the marshes of North Carolina.The second timeline follows an investigation into the apparent murder of Chase Andrews, a local ...
hectordanielbuelna's Review of Where the Crawdads Sing
Check out hectordanielbuelna's 2/10 review of "Where the Crawdads Sing" Menu. Movies. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets ... Top 250 TV Shows Most Popular TV Shows Browse TV Shows by Genre TV News. Watch. What to Watch Latest Trailers IMDb Originals IMDb Picks IMDb ...

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