Where The Crawdads Sing: Soapy Murder

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.

Director Olivia Newman translates the best-selling novel into a romance that happens to have a courtroom drama aspect and celebrates the resilience of nature. Set in a fictional, coastal North Carolina town, it spends the majority of the time exploring the place the main character calls home. She is known around town as “the marsh girl,” the court addresses her as Catherine Danielle Clark, but we know her as Kya.

Kya is a blend of literary traits and tropes including being abandoned, smart, beautiful, artists, and so much more. Her abusive father drove her entire family out of the house until it was just him and her and one day he too left. Kya is on her own throughout her childhood and her teen years, surviving off of selling mussels and roaming free throughout the wetlands capturing its beauty through her untrained artistic ability. She feels very edited, but Edgar-Jones plays it well.

The mystery is unraveled through a series of flashbacks to explain Kya’s relationship with Chase Andrews, the boy discovered dead underneath the fire tower. The film is in no urgent need to solve the murder, it takes its sweet time to detail every single event in the life of Kya from her childhood abandonment to her teenage romances. While it is a part of legal drama, the case details are shoved into the final few minutes that leave its shocking twist with little impact. These flashbacks don’t aid in the trial but mostly set up how the townspeople view her. Neither the legal nor romance aspects are able to come together.

For a best-selling novel, its screen adaptation doesn’t work to leave a lasting impact but is an enjoyable break from the blockbuster season.