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

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 be in the minds of 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

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