where the crawdads sing movie review roger ebert

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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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: 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’: Arrest draws a recluse out of her wetlands isolation in uneven but well-acted period piece

Daisy edgar-jones’ performance and the gorgeous imagery redeem a book adaptation that’s uneven and sometimes implausible..

Abandoned by her family at age 6, Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) grows up on her own in a North Carolina cabin in “Where the Crawdads Sing.”

You’ve never seen a Marsh Girl as attractive and kempt and impressive as the Marsh Girl in “Where the Crawdads Sing.” Even though she has lived all by herself in a rudimentary cabin deep in the wetlands for the better part of a decade with no formal schooling and very little social contact, she looks like she stepped out of a Sears catalog and apparently shaves her legs, bathes and shampoos on a regular basis, has lovely white teeth, and get this: She’s such a brilliant observer and student of her surroundings, such a talented artist, that she just sold a book of her drawings of seashells to a publisher and received a nifty $5,000 advance, and this is in 1969 so that’s about 40 grand in today’s dollars. Marsh Girl has it going on!

And yet when Marsh Girl is literally hauled out of the water and charged with the murder of a local young man named Chase who is a former football hero, practically everyone in town is convinced she’s guilty, because after all, she’s that weirdo Marsh Girl, aka Missing Link, aka Wolf Girl. Nothing but a savage, they’ll tell ya. Of course she murdered Chase, because she knew she wasn’t good enough for him.

This is one of the many eyebrow-raising hitches in the plot of the uneven and at times implausible period-piece drama “Where the Crawdads Sing,” and yet we are recommending it because Daisy Edgar-Jones (“Under the Banner of Heaven”) is luminous and spectacularly effective in the lead role, it’s one of the most gorgeously photographed films of the year, the invaluable David Straitharn provides terrific supporting work, and despite the problematic storyline, it works as an escapist piece of fantasy entertainment.

Director Olivia Newman (“First Match”) and screenwriter Lucy Alibar (“Beasts of the Southern Wild” have been tasked with adapting one of the most successful books in recent history: the 2018 novel of the same name by Delia Owens, which sold a whopping 12 million copies after being selected by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club. (Witherspoon is one of the executive producers of the movie.) With Louisiana filling in for North Carolina, the time-jumping storyline is faithful to the novel, telling the story of one Catherine Danielle Clark, aka Kya, who is but 6 years old by the time her mother, then her older siblings and finally her abusive father abandon their marshland cabin, leaving Kya to fend for herself. Somehow the girl survives for years, with the occasional help of Mabel (Michael Hyatt) and Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.), a local couple who own a nearby grocery store and seem to exist solely for the purpose of quietly and kindly looking after Kya whenever they can. (Jojo Regina does wonderful work portraying Kya as a little girl, with Edgar-Jones picking up the role when Kya is a teenager and young woman in her 20s.)

It’s 1969 when the adult Kya is arrested and charged with the murder of upscale townie Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). Retired attorney Tom Milton (David Straitharn), who is right out of the “To Kill a Mockingbird” playbook, volunteers to take Kya’s case and tells her he can’t defend her unless he gets to know her, at least a little bit. Cue the flashbacks to the 1950s and early 1960s, as we see how Kya becomes one with her surroundings, getting to know all the creatures great and small with the skill set of the untrained but talented scientist/author she will become.

A goodhearted and handsome local boy named Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith) takes a shine to Kya, first befriending her, then teaching her to read and write and eventually falling in love with her, and for this stretch of time the film plays like a soggy version of “The Notebook.” Tate goes off to the University of North Carolina with the promise to return to Kya on the Fourth of July, but in a heartbreakingly effective scene, Kya spends the night on the beach alone and wakes up devastated because Tate never showed.

A year or so later, another handsome local comes calling. Chase Andrews says all the right things as he courts Kya, but there’s something off about this guy. Against her better judgment, Kya allows Chase into her heart, but she eventually learns the truth about his jerk and tries to extricate herself from his life, but the possessive and duplicitous and violent Chase is having none of it. When Chase is found dead in the marsh, all signs and a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence point to Kya, which leads to the trial portion of the movie, complete with witnesses who are predisposed to judge Kya, a district attorney dead set on convicting her and a courtroom packed with observers who react on cue every time a bombshell is dropped. After the verdict is read, we’re given an epilogue that spans a number of decades and feels rather rushed but provides a measure of suitably satisfying albeit melodramatic closure.

Thanks in large part to the beautiful work by Daisy Edgar-Jones and the consistently stunning visuals, “Where the Crawdads Sing” provides just enough marshland entertainment to carry the day.

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Parents' guide to, where the crawdads sing.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 26 Reviews
Kids Say 38 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Standout performances in uneven, trauma-filled adaptation.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 14+?

Children hear their father beating their mother and siblings. A woman with visib

Two love scenes: one quick, the other a bit longer. Both show men's bare chests

Insult language: "marsh girl," "White trash," "rat girl," "cooties." "Damn," "da

High school- and college-age characters drink beer. Adults drink at a restaurant

Any Positive Content?

Explores importance of nature, self-education, and being a lifelong learner. Dep

Kya is observant, a quick learner, a dedicated naturalist. She's incredibly smar

Two of Kya's few friends are Jumpin' and his wife, Mabel, the movie's only Black

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.

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.

Products & Purchases

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.

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 .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (26)
Kids say (38)

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 Reviews

What means to be a whodunit that leaves the reveal to the very, very end, Where the Crawdads Sing, directed by Olivia Newman, instead sucks all of the mystery out of a murder trial that offers no alternatives to the theory at hand.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2024

It’s far more concerned with binary portrayals of good and bad, presenting them as overly whimsical or toxic respectively. It’s a promising concept that translates into a frustrating experience of tonal incoherence.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 15, 2024

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

Screen Rant

Where the crawdads sing.

126 minutes

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Olivia Newman

PG-13

126 minutes

Reviews (2)

A pretty faithful adaptation to the novel, Where the Crawdads Sing. I have read the novel, so I felt that this movie did a good job capturing the story on the screen, with few discrepancies.

Where the Crawdads Sing is one of the rare book-to-movie adaptations where the movie is better than the source material. The film is earnest, emotional, and devastating in a good way. The acting is top-notch as well.

Your Rating

Daisy edgar-jones, taylor john smith, harris dickinson, michael hyatt, david strathairn, sterling macer, jr., images (14), screen rant review, where the crawdads sing review: gorgeous visuals clash with storytelling issues.

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.

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Where the Crawdads Sing film review — marshland murder novel gets muddy adaptation

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Where the Crawdads Sing

Review by brian eggert july 13, 2022.

With its “Reece’s Book Club” sticker and a storyline that involves both a love triangle and a courtroom drama, author Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing became a major best-seller during the height of COVID-19. The book shattered all sorts of records in the publishing industry, and in the subsequent pandemic years, Owens’ debut outsold competition from Stephen King, John Grisham, Margaret Atwood, and Nicholas Sparks. In all transparency, I haven’t read the book. And sitting down to the movie, I knew only vaguely of its popularity and nothing of its story. Afterward, I was surprised to learn the book isn’t categorized as young adult fiction. In its screen form, the coming-of-age story recalls so much of Stephenie Meyer and Suzanne Collins, where a young woman, an outsider, finds herself caught between two hunks while facing threats from the establishment and uncovering personal revelations along the way. Exchange vampires or a post-apocalyptic setting for the marshes of North Carolina in the mid-twentieth century, and you have yourself a Harlequin Romance inflected with zoology, Southern charm, and a banal murder mystery.

Neither a compelling romance nor a convincing whodunit, the movie has the styleless feel of many best-seller adaptations. Filmmakers often resist making bold choices when translating from page to screen, fearing that readers will reject any cinematic flourishes that don’t align with their mental image of a book’s events. The goal of some adaptations, then, seems to be creating a movie so generic that readers will unconsciously project their experiences with the book onto the blank-canvas film and re-experience the book on screen. Where the Crawdads Sing fulfills that demand nicely. Director Olivia Newman delivers a competent-looking production, and cinematographer Polly Morgan ( A Quiet Place Part II ) captures some gorgeous scenery from the location shooting around Louisiana. The performances are generally good, especially the lead, and the plot will hold your attention well enough. But somehow, the movie doesn’t have a vibrant life of its own, suggesting it has been crafted for established fans who will imbue the experience with what the filmmaking lacks, leaving those like me unconverted.

For the uninitiated, the story takes place primarily in 1969 around the winding marshes of Barkley Cove, North Carolina. The opening shots follow a CGI crane that flies from the marsh to the ocean to the swamp, surveying terrain that will become important later. The intrigue begins at the bottom of a fire tower, where some locals find the dead body of Chase, a young man said to have been in a relationship with the “Marsh Girl”—a solitary young woman who lives on the margins of town. This is Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones, excellent in this year’s Fresh ), an intelligent and artistic amateur biologist who makes lovely drawings of the animals she relates to most: birds, because she likes her freedom; shells, because she lives in one; and insects, because they have no politics. Kya is blamed for Chase’s death and put on trial for murder. Her defense attorney, the kindly Tom Milton (David Strathairn), must work her case despite her unwillingness to speak up or confront impossible prejudices from locals who believe she’s a witch or a mystical swamp thing.

Newman and editor Alan Edward Bell alternate between the backstory and courtroom scenes, a tactic designed to create tension about the central question: Who killed Chase? But the viewer never feels much concern that Kya will be convicted. The prosecutor (Eric Ladin) has pretty lame evidence, so Milton doesn’t have to try all that hard to convince the jury of Kya’s innocence. There’s no dramatic testimony or revelations in the courtroom, thus the viewer of Where the Crawdads Sing feels no real anxiety over Kya’s fate. When it’s eventually revealed what happened to Chase, it’s less an answer to a lingering question throughout the film than another facet of Kya’s interior life. Structurally, the court case becomes a deflated excuse to put Kya’s lifestyle on trial against the so-called normal lifestyles of the townies, who should be envying that the Marsh Girl looks so much like a model despite living, you know, in a marsh. Meanwhile, no one, not even Kya, addresses the cruelty of the natural world. Her life is committed to observing, documenting, and cherishing the creatures of the marsh, and she blissfully ignores how savage Nature can be. Werner Herzog would be disappointed. If her life were a documentary, it would be one that conveniently cuts away when a predator corners its defenseless prey.

Although the last-minute twist feels like a cheap trick, I liked what it said about Kya, suggesting that some part of her remained a lifelong secret, contentedly free within her own shell in the expansive marshes. But I never felt wholly connected to Kya; whether it’s Newman’s direction or an issue with the source material, I cannot be sure. I suspect that we were supposed to view Kya the way she sees her natural specimens—a creature that inhabits Nature, with an almost biological imperative in that world. We can observe her behavior and appreciate her beauty as spectators, but we cannot bottle her. And we cannot fully understand her mind any more than we can fully understand a bird’s thoughts. If that’s true, then narration seems like a counterintuitive choice. Owens’ third-person book doubtlessly kept an appropriate distance, and the film perhaps should have created more mystery about the character. All of this is overshadowed by the fact that Owens was questioned about but never charged with the real-life murder of a poacher in 1995, leading to all manner of fascinating and troubling questions about the book’s origins and how much Owens put herself into Kya.

Undoubtedly, fans will tell me that I would like the movie more had I read the book. Maybe that’s true. But my critic’s brain tells me that I shouldn’t have to read a book to enjoy a movie, and I think it’s right. Unless of course, the filmmakers intended the adaptation as a multi-textual experience like David Cronenberg’s 1991 film Naked Lunch (though, I suspect they did not). Instead, Where the Crawdads Sing is a sentimental crowd-pleaser. It’s also a silly fantasy that avoids any of the ugly realities of mid-century America in the South to a troubling degree. 1969 was one of the most disruptive and volatile years in American history, yet Kya manages to live in her bubble and avoid all that, pure and almost saintly in her commitment to Nature. Escaping the realities of humanity is a pleasant notion, to be sure. Perhaps that’s what attracts readers to the material. Their secret wish of living independently among butterflies and birds is an idyllic dream. But in its present form, the story lacks a compelling thrust and treatment.

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Where the Crawdads Sing

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

Dove Review

Where the Crawdads Sing is an adaptation of Delia Owens’ novel by the same name, which convincingly depicts Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) as a young, abandoned girl from a North Carolina bayou in the 1950s through the 1960s, who is dubbed by neighbors, “Marsh Girl.” The viewer observes Kya, always barefoot and dirty, being mistreated and abandoned her entire childhood by family and townsfolk, alike, that cast numerous aspersions on her for being “different.” As might be expected, it is only the black shopkeeper couple who takes pity on her, seemingly able to relate to Kya’s marginalization, that is, until love interests surface.

As Kya bravely faces life in a great deal of isolation, providing for herself, yet rarely leaving her charming homey surroundings, she consistently finds comfort in nature, where she communes with the native wildlife, and begins to draw striking representations of these creatures, leading to some unexpected success in her life. As a young woman, Kya becomes embroiled in two romantic situations at different periods, and trouble ensues as a result of one of her partner’s behavior, leaving Kya on trial for murder. Her lawyer, Tom Milton (David Strathairn) skillfully brings a genuine old southern feel to the entire courtroom drama.

The acting is, in fact, outstanding by all, as these characters and those who portray them, move this quiet film along at a comfortable pace. There are scenes of sex, passionate kissing, verbal slurs, and alcohol usage, that are mostly mild in nature. However, some depictions of domestic abuse that include violence; an attempt at sexual assault; and an offscreen murder that much of this storyline revolves around, could be disturbing to some.

Nevertheless, meaningful conversations could take place with older teens, regarding empathy; the impact of trauma on an individual; the effects of prejudice; and what it might mean to always be in “survival mode,” which makes the ending of this fictional biography that much more shocking.

The Dove Take

Where the Crawdads Sing and its metaphorical marsh take the viewer on a psychological journey through one character’s survival against all odds, where the big-bang ending makes the whole ride worthwhile.

Dove Rating Details

One secondary character quotes scriptures as a reason to be kind to others.

One main character and three secondary characters make extreme efforts to protect the main character.

Three scenes of intimacy, two of which lead to sex, one of which takes place onscreen.

D-m*/G-ddam*, racial comments/innuendos.

Men slapping and punching women and children, attempted sexual assault, offscreen murder with dead body portrayed, a rock used as a weapon.

One character is alcohol dependent; one main character drinks beer socially.

Disrobed characters with shoulders, upper chests, and backs exposed in the context of sexual/intimate circumstances.

Circumstances of abandonment, domestic abuse, isolation, mental illness, and trauma.

More Information

Film information, dove content.

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Film review: Where the Crawdads Sing

The movie version of American author Delia Owens’ best-selling novel has been highly anticipated by many, but something is lost in the adaptation.

Here is some of what we learn. A swamp is not a marsh, a marsh being a deeper and darker ecosystem with many places to hide. Crawdads are tiny shellfish and they don’t sing, except metaphorically. And a best-selling book and a ripper story do not guarantee a great movie, even in the hands of Reese Witherspoon, who championed the book and whose company, Hello Sunshine, produced the film.

The film isn’t awful but it should have been better. How is it possible to get a bit bored in a story that is quintessential Louisiana noir ? None of this is the fault of its lead, UK actor Daisy Edgar-Jones ( Normal People ), who, as Kya – known to the folks in town as Marsh Girl – gives a suitably impenetrable performance that mixes naivety and brains in a way that never seems mawkish.

Kya’s life is a sad saga of rural poverty and we meet her as a young girl in an isolated cabin in a North Carolina swamp with an alcoholic and violent father who drives away her mother, then her brothers and sister. Finally, he leaves as well, and Kya, illiterate and unschooled but a gifted artist and observer of the natural world, learns to survive, helped in no small part by the owners of the bait and tackle shop, who are Black and also considered outsiders.

Two men change her destiny. Tate (Taylor John Smith), a boy she bumps into on the marshes, is a kindred spirit and he leaves her feathers as tokens of friendship. They become friends and lovers. Tate teaches Kya literacy, and convinces her to find a publisher for her wildlife drawings. Then he goes to college, leaving the swamplands for a different life.

The other is Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), an entitled local with a brutish charm that Kya, for all her smarts, falls for. And it is his death, apparently accidental but maybe not, for which Kya is arrested and put on trial.

Chase fell from the top of a fire tower through a grate and is found face down in the swamp mud. There are no footprints nearby and no fingerprints on the tower, which should point to Kya’s innocence. Then again, because she is Marsh Girl, it could just prove she murdered him, even though she was out of town for a meeting with her publishers on the night that it happened. She refuses to defend herself by taking the stand before the people who have judged her since she was little.

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The film’s weakness is its enervating structure that cuts back and forth and shuts down every potential emotional connection before it is made.

Where the Crawdads Sing opens with the trial, setting up the murder scenario, then flips back to Kya’s youth, and it keeps right on doing this in a way that sucks the energy from the screen. Nothing is allowed to reach its potential in the way it could in the book, written by wildlife botanist Delia Owens, who really did collect feathers.

The story, leaving aside its denouement, is over-explained through narration, as if no one trusts the audience to know what happened, and our sympathy for the characters is never given the space to grow. It is a gripping story, believe me. What a shame you don’t feel that as you watch it.

Where the Crawdads Sing opens in cinemas this week.

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‘Where the Crawdads Sing’…Is Within a Dull, Well-Scrubbed Southern Gothic Mediocrity

By David Fear

The big-screen treatment of a bestseller, a well-scrubbed Southern Gothic, a next-gen star’s showcase, a romance-murder-mystery-courtroom-drama-dessert-topping-floor-wax, The Movie That Would Be The Notebook — these are some of the ways to describe Where the Crawdads Sing, the adaptation of Delia Shannon’s book-club staple about love and death among the marshlands. (The nicer ways, at least.) If you’re among the gajillions who’ve read the novel, you know the premise: In 1969, a body is found near an observation tower in Barkley Cove, North Carolina. The victim either fell or was pushed. There are no fingerprints or footprints near the scene of the crime. But there is a prime suspect: a young woman named Kya who’s spent most of her life living completely on her own, deep in the swamp. She’s considered dim-witted, degenerate and a danger to “polite” society by the local townsfolk. Naturally, she must be the murderer. You can never judge a book by its cover, however. Unless the tome in question is Shannon’s pageturner, of course — in which you absolutely know what you’re getting into before you’ve even cracked the spine.

As the kindly lawyer (David Strathairn, at his most David Strathairn-iest) who’s come out to retirement to represent her preps his defense, we get to know who the accused is and what she’s been through. A child living in the Carolina wild circa 1953, the seven-year-old Kya Clark (Jojo Regina) was stuck in a nightmare version of a Lil’ Abner comic strip: extreme poverty, domestic abuse courtesy of a volatile father (Garret Dillahunt), abandonment by her mother — and, eventually, all of her older siblings — as well as being mocked for her illiteracy and showing up at school shoeless and filthy. When Dad takes off as well, the kid people derisively call the “Marsh Girl” is left completely on her own. An African-American couple (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt) who runs a modest general store helps her when they can. But she quickly has to learn how to fend for herself.

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Cut to the 1960s, and the older Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ) has managed to live isolated from the world while sustaining herself for years. She’s still a pariah, but is now also an accomplished artist, specializing in drawing the flora, fauna and feral creatures who call the Carolina shores home; she can spew out facts about the local birds and chat about what marine life is indigenous to the surroundings like a scholar. Plus she has a knack for turning her desolate domicile into a down-home designer’s dream; when she spots a land developer taking photos around the property, your first assumption is that he’s shooting a spread for Swamp Dweller Chic Quarterly. A handsome young neighbor named Tate (Taylor John Smith) begins teaching her how to read and write, as well as encouraging Kya to send her pictures in to book publishers, because she’s that good ! And he’s that good-hearted ! A love between the two blooms, resulting in the young woman’s first real taste of happiness, the joy of backlit kisses at sunset, and many, many clinches involving water and various states of mutual dampness. ( We weren’t kidding about re: that Notebook crack above. )

Soon, Tate leaves for college and their rural Eden is interrupted. It also gains a snake, in the form of Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). He’s the kind of smooth-talking, Teflon rich-kid with a heart of coal that screams “Future Alleged Rapist Turned Supreme Court Justice.” Chase gives the appearance of being a nice guy. Then he becomes aggressive, which morphs into outright abusive, and peaks at whatever level is right above when-anger-management-issues-turn-homicidal. The fact that this golden boy’s family is well-known, and that Tate has just returned to town, complicates matters. Suddenly, you remember why Kya is in jail, and doesn’t that corpse we met in the film’s opening few minutes look mighty familiar right about now….

This is all Melodrama Catnip 101, and you can see why so many folks might have thrilled to this on the purple-prosed page. And while director Olivia Newman ( First Match ) and screenwriter Lucy Alibar ( Beasts of the Southern Wild ) retain the book’s breathless, beach-read momentum — sudden violence! love triangles! plot surprises! incredibly photorealistic sketches of shells! — there doesn’t seem to be much of a spark in the engine powering these narrative turns. Can a movie be both hyperventilating and lackluster at the same time? Can you film in real Southern locations, among actual cypress and tupelo trees, and still make folks feel like they’re witnessing a backlot version of the backwoods? It’s a rare movie that gives you incredible regional scenery yet curiously, very little sense of a region, any region, at all. We don’t need a sweaty Tennessee Williams hothouse for these flowers, but such a torrid story set in such an anodyne South feels all sorts of wrong. Who wants a room-temperature barn-burner, even if it comes with Straithairn engaging in Atticus Finch cosplay?

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Johnny Oleksinski

‘where the crawdads sing’ review: overblown and tedious southern drama.

If you walk into “Where The Crawdads Sing” looking for a nice animated movie about a shellfish choir, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING

Running time: 125 minutes. Rated PG-13 (sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault.) In theaters.

No, the sappy film is about a beautiful woman who lives in a marsh. And don’t you forget it! Based on controversial author Delia Owens’ popular novel, when the dialogue isn’t sanitizing abuse and rape, it’s waxing poetic about sea creatures, grass and owls.

Long stretches of floral language is OK in a book. On-screen, however, it’s pretentious. A slog in a bog.

Sure, we always love to see Daisy Edgar-Jones, the talented British actress who hit it big with the brilliant miniseries “Normal People.” But, unlike that layered show, “Crawdads” gives her nothing to chew on except a Southern accent.

We first meet her character Kya as she is arrested for the murder of a man named Chase, who fell to his death from a watchtower. To explain what happened, she tells her lawyer, an Atticus Finch type played by David Strathairn, her overly literary life story.

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kya, who townsfolk call "the marsh girl," in "Where The Crawdad Sings."

Little Kya (Jojo Regina) lives in a cabin far from a North Carolina town — you gotta use a boat to get anywhere — with her mom, siblings and a cruel father in the 1950s. When they gradually all run from their dangerous situation, including no-good pop, she’s left to fend for herself.

Grown-up and gorgeous, she is shunned by the town like Hester Prynne and derisively called “marsh girl.” North Carolina, we learn, is a bizarro state in which beautiful, well-dressed people are hated. But not by Kya’s freakishly kind childhood friend named Tate (Taylor John Smith), who starts wooing her. It’s a match made in marshland: She’s obsessed with scallops and he wants to be a biologist.

Men boat up to Kya’s house in the middle of the night as if auditioning for an aquatic “Say Anything,” and next in line is Chase (Harris Dickinson), a jerk.

Her choice is obvious, but it takes some 90 minutes of overripe dialogue to get there.

Tate (Taylor John Smith) and Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) are smitten.

Tate and Chase are crudely drawn characters on-screen — an angel and devil — and we never fully embrace either. Because the story is about a woman’s painful struggle, the film is afraid of ever becoming fully romantic. The only thing Kya, a keen artist, is in love with is painting pictures of snails.

Strange, though, how hesitant director Olivia Newman is with depictions of violence. Every deplorable slap and punch is safely presented, and are overcome with unbelievable ease. Early in the movie, one of Kya’s brothers — a little boy — walks out of the house having just been pummeled by their dad. Bruised, bloodied and blasé, his casual demeanor suggests he just left the candy store.

Mabel (Michael Hyatt) runs a local shop and helps Kya.

Also bothersome are the characters Mabel (Michael Hyatt) and Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.), flatly written black shop owners who exist solely to console and protect Kya and have no other defining details or characteristics.

Providing a hint of redemption is Edgar-Jones, a naturally vulnerable actress who can turn the shallowest of material into something deep. We like Kya and are with her every step of the way, even though at over two hours there about 50 steps too many.

After an interminable windup (more sweeping shots of egrets!), the bombshell ending is rewarding.

Yet, I suspect it’s a lot more fun to arrive at on a Kindle.

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Movie Review: Where the Crawdads Sing

Sometimes an actor's performance is so good that it can elevate so-so material. That is the case with Where the Crawdads Sing and lead actress Daisy Edgar-Jones. She is excellent in this movie, but the film itself suffers from an overstuffed screenplay by Lucy Alibar ( Beasts of the Southern Wild , Troop Zero ) and limp direction by Olivia Newman.

Based on the popular best-selling novel by Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing is set in North Carolina (actually shot in New Orleans and Houma, Louisiana) between 1952 and 1969. Edgar-Jones plays Kya Clark, a quiet young woman who has lived by herself deep in the marshes of North Carolina since childhood. She isn't seen in town that often, so the townspeople call her "Marsh Girl" and even claim she is a witch with glowing eyes. It's like she is their very own Boggy Creek Monster.

Anyway, the movie opens with Kya being arrested for the murder of a young man, Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), who was the town football hero. Lawyer Tom Milton (the always wonderful David Strathairn) comes out of retirement to take Kya's case.

From there, the movie is a series of flashbacks, from Kya's sad childhood to her recent romance with the too good to be true fantasy boyfriend character Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith). We also get subplots that go nowhere, like the state wanting to put Kya in a home or developers wanting to take her land.

Newman's film rushes through scene after scene with little insight, and that is frustrating. One of the most damning scenes is when Kya has her first sexual experience. It's painful for Kya, both physically and emotionally, and Edgar-Jones sells it, but then the scene quickly - so quickly that it's laughable - moves to a plot point with Kya presenting Chase with a necklace that will figure prominently in the murder trial later. Let the character digest what has just happened to her, and then introduce the necklace a scene or two later.

Also, the two boys vying for Kya's attention are both really one-note. Tate is the ultra-perfect white knight, and Chase is clearly the creepiest of creeps the first moment he's on screen.

Still, Edgar-Jones is terrific, and so is the actress that plays the younger Kya (Jojo Regina). See the film for their performances.

Maybe the movie's troubles stem from squeezing the novel into a two-hour movie, which is often the case with books to movies. Perhaps Where the Crawdads Sing would have worked better as a limited run series.

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Where the Crawdads Sing

Thank you for rating this movie read your review below. ratings will be added after 24 hours..

Based on 272 votes and 98 reviews

Please rate between 1 to 5 stars

*How would you rate this movie?

I liked the movie. I read the book and saw the movie twice. I am from North Florida around the Panhandle. I know about the crawdads and the marshes. My granddaughter meet the guy that played the sheriff. She works and goes to school in Tallahassee. Wonderful movie.

Everything -- Loved the book and the movie.

Special, thoughtful film, the likes of which more are needed.

Loved the entire movie..highly recommend.. absolutely a must see film. 5 stars +++++

I have gone to the theater 6 times to see this movie and have it downloaded on my iPad

Great story, acting and amazing scenery. Just a great movie

good movie, kept my interest, but just kind of mediocre. Worth watching but nothing you will remember a year from now.

Total snoozefest - waste of money - low budget acting

Picked certain parts out of the book. movies of this calibar make me never want to see a movie again. waste of money and time. yawned quite a bit. now elvis- I would see twice. entertaining, insightful, artistic, historical-way to go!

Wonderful movie! I recommend to all!

Slow moving. Book was better. I'd wait for it to come out streaming.

The scenery in this movie was astounding and, for me, Made it worth seeing the movie just for that! I had read the book and the movie is slightly different, but I think completely captures the story. Most times, I prefer a book to a movie, but the cinematography of this movie really brought it to life for me. I would go to see it again tomorrow.

The scenery in this movie was astounding and, for me, Made it worthin the movie just for that! I had read the book and the movie is slightly different but I think completely captures the story. Most times, I prefer a book to a movie, but the cinematography of this movie really brought it to life for me. I would go to see it again tomorrow.

Having not read the book I was not already 'in the know' on the story so I loved it.

Loved the movie

Very good movie, loved the whole thing from beginning to end. Kept my interest the entire time.

wanted more of her younger years. her growing up was what the story was about

Suspenseful. Will go and watch again!!

Great movie... I recommend seeing this!

I plan to see it again!

Great plot, great acting, and a surprise ending. Everything you want in a movie. Loved it!!

It is just an excellent film.

Loved the movie. Acting was excellent, just nice to see a good movie

Awesome movie! It held my attention from the beginning to the very end, which had an unexpected surprise.

Loved the movie. Acting was excellent, just nice to see a good movie that held your attention evey minute. Would recommend. 👍👍👍👍👍

It was brilliant, actors and story alike! can see why the novel was on Ophras must read list. Can’t wait read the novel.

a real movie with real actors and not something generated by a computer

I thought I was going to see a musical, but it was okay.

It is a surprise they still can make a picture which gives audience something like real life story. No BS flying bullets without loading, no tattoos and acres of bare skin and still keeps adrenaline flowing and our emotions high. Believable very good acting and few of great acting performances, without thousands of extras and billions spend to shock us.. Exceptional, pleasant moving picture. Well done.

Followed book pretty closely, sad but empowering, beautiful scenery. Appreciated the fact there was no vulgar language.

Great acting and cinematography. Twist and turns more complicated than the book. There is two plausible who dunnit.

Acting O.K. Movie or story just O.K.

Plot twist to a cool ending!

I liked that it followed the book plot! There were a few things they left out or changed, but it didn't change the plot.

I liked the fact that it kept me interested all the way throughout the movie. Very good scenery and the pictures we’re not dark as some movies are. Nice story plot but a surprise at the end.

A good entertaining movie with a good plot and a nice ending. Partial nudity but no vulgar language which is a nice change. Nice twist at the end to make you go hmmmm.

Such a touching story with a bit of suspense. Beautiful scenery. A must see. More than once!

Lots of twist and turns. Well written movie.

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In the Summers

Told in four chapters that span two decades, Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In the Summers” follows the relationship between two sisters and their troubled father, whom they visit over the years in Las Cruces, New Mexico, as their formative experiences are irrevocably altered by his volatile, yet vulnerable, disposition.

It’s the stuff of which classic melodramas—with their heightened emotions and moral dilemmas—are made. But Lacorazza, a debut filmmaker whose screenplay was inspired by her own family history, takes a gentler approach that swells most in small silences and renders the film’s main narrative conceit—that, as they grow, the sisters are portrayed by different sets of actors, each pair building upon the fine-grained emotional expression of the last—miraculously without artifice.

In Lacorazza’s hands, the film becomes less about individual memories of a fraught childhood than their gradual accumulation; it’s not slice-of-life but rather summation-of-self, for all three protagonists. It reflects the ways in which those fleeting moments we spend with our families add up, however happily or unhappily, to the first draft of a personal history we’re then left as adults to parse and process.

Vicente—played in a commanding, quietly devastating debut performance by the Puerto Rican rapper René “Residente” Pérez Joglar—is a complicated figure in the lives of his daughters, Violeta (Dreya Renae Castillo) and Eva (Luciana Quinonez) from a young age. Divorced from their mother, who still lives in California, he’s since returned to the city of his childhood—shot by cinematographer Alejandro Mejía, who casts this desert mesa in soft, nostalgic hues before the light grows harsher and harder— and fallen back into patterns of destructive behavior that, we’re led to understand, contributed to the marriage’s dissolution.

But when he picks his daughters up in front of the airport and drives them back to his mother’s adobe-style house, which he’s inherited, Vicente is in high spirits; swimming with them in the backyard pool, holding court around a billiards table in the neighborhood bar, sharing his interest in stargazing, he’s playful and affectionate, clearly intelligent and eager to share what he knows—or at least what he thinks he does—with his children, who soak it up. Even in this first chapter, one can recognize early signs of trouble in the cigarette over Vicente’s ear and his overindulgence in alcohol. Still, it comes as a shock when, while taking his daughters home, he starts to drive erratically, joking around, failing to see what we see: Violeta, startled in the backseat, not buckled in and keenly aware, as Vicente nearly crashes, that trusting him to get them home safely was a mistake. Quietly, she seems to say to herself, “I won’t let that happen again.”

Small but significant, this moment is one of several that first summer with lasting consequences in how it shapes not only the way Vicente’s daughters see him but the way they see themselves in relation to his presence and absence, his attention and neglect, his tempestuous emotions. Lacorazza’s interest is not in explosive confrontations between parents and children—though a few moments at which long-simmering antagonism between Vicente and Violeta bubbles over into physical force are afforded the impact they warrant—but in subtle, finely detailed sequences that reflect her characters as they present themselves to one another: tense, tender, and in their own ways trying , if not always to work toward something better than at least to recapture the fading magic of happier days.

But each of the chapters is separated by still-life tableaux resembling Dutch Vanitas, altars filled with framed family photographs, and other memento mori that, though soundtracked by lively Latin music, remind us of how relentlessly time passes, without a second thought for our best intentions. When the children visit their father next, they’ve grown—Eva (now played by Allison Salinas) into a young woman desperate for her father’s affection, Violeta (Kimaya Thais Limón) into an older, wiser sibling who’s wary of him. Violeta, now wearing her hair short—like the local bartender, Carmen (Emma Ramos), a childhood friend of Vicente’s who steps up for the girls when she needs to—is enamored of a Las Cruces resident, Camila (Gabriella Elizabeth Surodjawan), whom her father occasionally tutors in physics. Eva, whom Vicente disparagingly remarks “looks just like her mother,” just wants him to see her as worthy, on her own merits, of his interest.

Vicente, for his part, is struggling with what Violeta now recognizes as alcoholism, and he’s prone to outbursts that push her further away, especially amid her exploration of an emerging queer identity that connotes more agency than Vicente can accept. That summer, with his once-vibrant home falling into disrepair and the pool increasingly stagnant with mud and leaves, Vicente squats in the ruins of his life, and the high mesa of Las Cruces takes on a dank, humid quality as well — left unattended one day as their father tries to find work, Violeta and Eva prod at the rotting corpse of a squirrel in the underpass.

The visit ends abruptly, with Vicente at fault for a traumatic accident, and Eva comes back alone the next summer to find that her father’s new wife (Leslie Grace) has moved in, along with their newborn. That Violeta stayed home in California so upsets Vicente that Eva, in his eyes, is a consolation prize. She’s in for a lonely few months. At the bar, Carmen looks on with pity as Eva, who brushed up on billiards to impress her father, finds that beating him has the opposite effect; as the teenage Eva, Salinas carries this middle section of “In the Summers” through expressive eyes that widen with hope at Vicente’s occasional entreaties and brim with tears at his rejection.

In the film’s final chapter, set years later, Violeta (Lío Mehiel) and Eva (Sasha Calle) return to Las Cruces as adults, hardened by their past experiences and less interested in bonding with their father than paying their respects. Violeta, who’s since transitioned, will be starting graduate school in the fall. Eva, now a heavy smoker hiding beneath thick sunglasses, is nursing sadnesses of her own—some from last summer, some not—that keep her at a distance Vicente can’t hope to close. It’s painful, but never cruel, the way Lacorazza reveals the boundaries these two have drawn up, and the mixture of resentment and pity that fills the space between them. Without explicating most of what’s transpired in the years between they last saw each other, Lacorazza makes clear there will be no climactic arguments or reconciliations here, not even healing: just the tracing of old wounds, to reflect on how they got there, and a chance to traverse familiar ground with new appreciation for what it meant and means.

Mehiel and Calle are gifted performers who illuminate their characters’ intimate anguishes and the love that binds them together. However, the emotional impact of “In the Summers” is cumulative, given how they build on the strengths of the younger actors, all of whom play their parts with grace and skill. As an ensemble, they achieve something extraordinary: the sense of a father-daughter bond unraveling in real time. To that end, the performance of Joglar, capturing the full measure of a man whose protective instincts and genuine love for his daughters are clear but whose frustrations get the better of him when it matters most, is most heartbreaking of all. “You guys did okay without me,” he says at one point, late in the film—an admission of fact, and of failure, all the more brutal for its plain-spoken nature.

Winner of the top two prizes—the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the Directing Award—at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “In the Summers” is remarkably attuned to setting. In her various chapters, Lacorazza takes time to luxuriate in the beauty of Las Cruces, with glittering night skies suggesting wide-open potential and rocky mountain vistas reflecting the characters’ winding paths beneath it. When the adult Violeta and Eva accompany Vicente across stunning white sand dunes, watching closely as he nurtures now-adolescent daughter Natalia (Indigo Montez), time seems at once to rush by and slow to a standstill, the hourglass—impossibly, for a moment—turning over. With all the weariness and wisdom of someone who’s lived this story, or at least a version of it, Lacorazza makes it clear you can never begin again. But you carry who you were, where you’ve been, and what it taught you into everything that happens next, and you keep going.

Isaac Feldberg

Isaac Feldberg is an entertainment journalist currently based in Chicago, who’s been writing professionally for nine years and hopes to stay at it for a few more.

Residente as Vicente
Sasha Calle as Eva
Lio Mehiel as Violeta
Leslie Grace as Yenny
Emma Ramos as Carmen
Sharlene Cruz as Camilla
Alessandra Lacorazza

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COMMENTS

Where the Crawdads Sing movie review (2022)
4 min read. 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 ...
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 ...
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: 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 ...
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 (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' review: Arrest draws a recluse out of her
'Where the Crawdads Sing': Arrest draws a recluse out of her wetlands isolation in uneven but well-acted period piece Daisy Edgar-Jones' performance and the gorgeous imagery redeem a book ...
Where the Crawdads Sing Movie Review
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 (film)
Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2022 American mystery drama film directed by Olivia Newman from a screenplay by Lucy Alibar, based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Delia Owens.The film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., Jojo Regina, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna O'Reilly, and David Strathairn.The story follows an abandoned yet defiant ...
Where the Crawdads Sing
TOP CRITIC. 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 ...
The Marsh King's Daughter movie review (2023)
4 min read. Like " Where the Crawdads Sing," "The Marsh King's Daughter" struggles to evoke the lyricism of the language in the novel it is based on, despite exquisite images of the wetland settings. Despite strong work from Ben Mendelsohn, Daisy Ridley, and Gil Birmingham, director Neil Burger's adaptation is a medium-level thriller.
Where the Crawdads Sing Summary, Trailer, Cast, and More
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.
Where the Crawdads Sing film review
The conclusion is clear: Witherspoon is good for books. Sadly she may also be bad for films, at least to judge by the twee and clumsy Where the Crawdads Sing. Delia Owens's debut novel was the ...
Delia Owens movie reviews & film summaries
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Where the Crawdads Sing
With its "Reece's Book Club" sticker and a storyline that involves both a love triangle and a courtroom drama, author Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing became a major best-seller during the height of COVID-19. The book shattered all sorts of records in the publishing industry, and in the subsequent pandemic years, Owens' debut outsold competition from Stephen King, John Grisham ...
Where the Crawdads Sing
Where the Crawdads Sing is an adaptation of Delia Owens' novel by the same name, which convincingly depicts Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) as a young, abandoned girl from a North Carolina bayou in the 1950s through the 1960s, who is dubbed by neighbors, "Marsh Girl." The viewer observes Kya, always barefoot and dirty, being mistreated and abandoned her entire childhood by family and townsfolk ...
Film review: Where the Crawdads Sing
The movie version of American author Delia Owens' best-selling novel has been highly anticipated by many, but something is lost in the adaptation. SA QLD. SA QLD. Donate Subscribe. Festivals Festivals. Virginia Gay unveils her Cabaret Festival line-up; Adelaide Biennial review: The search for sanctuary; Adelaide Festival review: Floods of ...
Review: 'Where the Crawdads Sing'? Not Inside a Good Movie, Apparently
When Dad takes off as well, the kid people derisively call the "Marsh Girl" is left completely on her own. An African-American couple (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt) who runs a modest ...
Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
Where the Crawdads Sing. Edit. Roger Ebert [Christy Lemire] ReelViews [James Berardinelli] New York Times [A.O. Scott] A Falk to Remember. A Film Life [Ian Taylor, Sheila Taylor] Abgeschminkt [Uwe Kraus] German.
'Where The Crawdads Sing' review: Overblown and tedious drama
Based on controversial author Delia Owens' popular novel, when the dialogue isn't sanitizing abuse and rape, it's waxing poetic about sea creatures, grass and owls. Long stretches of floral ...
Movie Review: Where the Crawdads Sing
Sometimes an actor's performance is so good that it can elevate so-so material. That is the case with Where the Crawdads Sing and lead actress Daisy Edgar-Jones. She is excellent in this movie, but the film itself suffers from an overstuffed screenplay by Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild, Troop Zero) and limp direction by Olivia Newman.Based on the popular best-selling novel by Delia ...
Where the Crawdads Sing reviews
Where the Crawdads Sing movie reviews and ratings - Winnipeg Movies rating of 4.55 out of 5 Stars. Theatres . All Theatres; Cinema City Northgate Cineplex Junxion Kildonan Place ... Where the Crawdads Sing. Thank you for rating this movie! Read your review below. Ratings will be added after 24 hours. 4.55 / 5 Based on 272 votes and 98 reviews ...
Where the crawdads sing
Where the crawdads sing - book vs movie. I didn't like how the theme of loneliness, her relationship with the marsh and learning how to survive alone wasn't the main focus of the film but rather her love life was - also didn't like how they cast Chase - he struck me as being more of an asshole and a preppy kid rather than a redneck.
In the Summers movie review & film summary (2024)
It's the stuff of which classic melodramas—with their heightened emotions and moral dilemmas—are made. But Lacorazza, a debut filmmaker whose screenplay was inspired by her own family history, takes a gentler approach that swells most in small silences and renders the film's main narrative conceit—that, as they grow, the sisters are portrayed by different sets of actors, each pair ...

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Film review: Where the Crawdads Sing