On Saturday night, I finished reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens; on Sunday afternoon I watched the recently-released movie version. I’m pretty sure that I’ve never read a book and watched its cinematic adaptation in such close proximity before and I’ll admit that the arrangement led me to scrutinize the latter far more than normal throughout its runtime. Part of that scrutiny (mental note-taking, thinking about construction, constantly reflecting about its effect on me) came from the movie not working for me, though, as well. That it didn’t wasn’t exactly a surprise, but I really tried to dig into what exactly made this feel like a mediocre film.
First, for context, the story: the Clark family lives in the marshes of North Carolina. The youngest daughter Kya (Jojo Regina) lives a precarious life there with an abusive father (Garrett Dillahunt) and both money and food tight among five children. When Kya’s mother leaves, her siblings slowly follow, eventually leaving the youngest alone with her father. That works for awhile and the two bond…until he too leaves and Kya is left to fend for herself. She is illiterate and unable to afford food, but she’s a resilient, resourceful kid and makes deals with the kindly grocers Jumpin’ and Mabel (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt) on the wharf and slowly carves out a niche.
Those who know the book or movie might quibble with my summary as I have indeed omitted a huge chunk of Where the Crawdads Sing. I’m beginning here, though, because this is the part of the film that really works. This section builds up the world around Kya that this story needs. We see an at first idyllic home torn apart by a violent alcoholic, we see a town of snooty locals who treat Kya like a rodent, and we meet the few good people who care for this little girl.
And we get to see the marsh, which is often a breath-taking, dynamic setting. Like a meadow of ocean, nature is the star here and the film highlights this with sweeping grand shots over the physical living world Kya explores. Where the Crawdads Sing never works better than when it revels in the glorious landscape—and soundscape, which music often gives way to—and lets the audience share in the beautiful world separate from the ugly one that shuns her.
My favorite parts of the novel were Kya scraping by, learning the marsh, coexisting uneasily with her father, and figuring things out without real guidance, and Regina captures this section with a splendid performance for such a young on-screen presence. She captures the wild swings of emotion—terror, despondency, awe—that fit a kid learning to be a person while perpetually alone.
Of course, this story isn’t just about a kid fending for herself: this is a series of interwoven tales from Kya’s entire life. There’s a love triangle teenage Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) finds herself caught in between the sweet aspiring biologist Taye (Taylor John Smith) who teaches her to read and the haughty, manipulative Chase (Harris Dickinson) who starred at quarterback in high school and now runs his father’s auto parts store. And then there’s the situation that frames the film version: Chase has been (possibly) murdered and Kya has been arrested for the crime. Only the kindly retired lawyer Tom (David Straithern) stands between her and the death penalty.
With so much going on, the novel maintains a strong balance between the past and present, never dwelling in one time period for too long while the two stories slowly converge. The film struggles more with this, letting things drag through rote courtroom scenes that lack inertia and resemble similar sequences done far better elsewhere. The mellow trial is surely more realistic than its explosive cinematic peers, but that doesn’t make it great viewing. The legal aspects also steal away the film’s greatest asset—stunning visuals of nature—which further left me frustrated by them.
That said, the murder case was a rare opportunity for us to see Edgar-Jones really capture Kya’s aloofness. Sketching on a notepad or gazing out the window, fully disengaged from the trial: this is the solitary naturalist Kya was in the novel, a shy enigma conditioned to avoid people. But this is a rarity on screen: too often the film pushes against that characterization. At one point, Kya sits on a beach amid strangers drawing—the film leverages it as a meet-cute of sorts with Chase—but a consistently-written Kya, the definition of isolated and antisocial, would never have done that. Combine this inexplicable spot with moments where Kya’s language and intensity become incongruous and the script’s struggle to really lock in its central character becomes clear.
But that struggle points toward issues that predate this adaptation: one** of my biggest frustrations from the novel contributes to this problem: Kya is hilariously overpowered. This is a character who faces a litany of obstacles—poverty, abuse, illiteracy, prejudice, isolation, heartbreak, and later both sexual assault and rape—but who also becomes the world’s most profitable naturalist as well as an artist, anonymous poet, and author with a lucrative publishing contract who is capable of solving every problem she encounters. Kya is cunning but naïve; she is rugged but empathetic. Don’t get me wrong: it’s difficult not to cheer for a little girl who claws out of such a hole to achieve success and a secure life, but it’s just a lot—and Kya often becomes exactly what the story needs her to be in a given moment while still being all those other things too. That can work in a novel format (although I might submit it doesn’t quite get there) but, even after excising a few skills and traits from the cinematic equivalent, the film still has to throw a ton at the screen to capture the superhero that is Kya. Edgar-Jones hits many of these notes—she embodies undaunted resolve as well here as she did in Under the Banner of Heaven—but Kya is a bit of everything to everyone which ratchets up the difficulty. Characters often have to spew out compliments and exposition just to keep her borderline omnipotence on screen, and I got the sense Edgar-Jones couldn’t convey a character defined by limitless ability and a personality of contradictions all at once.
**The other major frustration was the condescending portraits of Jumpin’ and Mabel, the black couple who provide for Kya and run a successful business in the south before the Civil Rights movement. The film fixes some of that issue, including multiple instances of explicit prejudice toward them—rather than just Kya—that the novel omits despite its third-person omniscient narration, which is a nice nod to a fact that all the pity for the marsh girl repeatedly overlooked.
The result is a film that feels…hokey, strange as that is to say. There were times where this plays like a Hallmark original movie, albeit one with impeccable production values and a strong cast. I can’t quite pinpoint the precise reason why—I suspect the stilted dialogue in the script, much of it directly from the novel, shoulders a lot of the blame—but I undeniably felt it. Likewise, it multiple times becomes a so-called “bodice ripper” where inordinate time is spent painstakingly removing shirts and blouses which…fine, these are all attractive people. But it did leave me wondering if I had miscalculated the primacy of Kya’s romantic entanglements in the book and story. Those scenes felt out of a different, kitschier movie than the serene, almost pastoral story that encompasses most of this one.
At its best, Where the Crawdads Sing is a juicy drama about an abandoned but resourceful child buoyed by gorgeous scenic shots and sounds that bring a vibrant world to life. It centers things on a story with a bit of everything and a rising star, Edgar-Jones, and crosses its fingers that those elements can paper over an awkward script. It doesn’t, though, and at its worst, the movie plays as soapy and corny, never bad but also often too tiresome, derivative, and inconsistent to be more than good. I don’t blame the filmmakers—I got the sense while reading that the novel wasn’t going to translate well—but I’ve gotta call it like I see it. This is a highly faithful adaptation of a popular novel that just can’t puzzle out the messy source material.
Granted, the audience at my Sunday afternoon showing (including my mom) would disagree with me. They were buzzing as it wrapped up. But, for me, Where the Crawdads Sing is middling entertainment that looks great but lacks what it needs to be anything greater than that.
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