Where the Crawdads Sing – Film Review

Abandoned as a girl, Catherine “Kya” Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones) raised herself in the dangerous marshlands of North Carolina. For years, rumors of the marsh girl haunted Barkley Cove, isolating the sharp and resilient Kya from her community. Drawn to two young men from town, she opens herself to a new and startling world.

“I wasn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full,” Kya says to her love interest Tate in Olivia Newman‘s film adaptation of Delia Owens’ novel Where the Crawdads Sing, the type of movie they simply don’t make anymore. To tell you the truth, it’s a wonder that this movie even exists in the first place.

Film adaptations of books like this don’t come around too often. Usually film adaptations these days are from fantasy, YA, and straight-up drama novels. But when was the last time you saw a book get adapted that follows a young girl’s life as she lives out in the marsh and is eventually accused of committing a heinous murder?

From the moment it opens, all the way down to its final few, haunting moments, Where the Crawdads Sing takes you on a meditative, unsettling, emotional, and powerful journey through our protagonist’s life in stylish fashion from director Olivia Newman, featuring the insanely moving new song “Carolina” by Taylor Swift – AKA my favorite singer to ever exist.

The song really does do a great job at exploring all of the movie’s themes. This one’s for all the folks out there who have felt like outsiders their whole life. It shows that, despite some setbacks, being a bit of a loner is okay. You can take that time to figure out who you are, while the rest of the world has to do it the hard way.

Kya is one of the most fascinating characters in a film in quite a long time. She has lived all alone in the marsh ever since she was a young girl and didn’t get a proper education because of it. There’s a heartbreaking scene early on where she actually gets to attend school, at which point the teacher asks her how to spell “dog” and she just can’t do it.

Tate comes along and makes her life better, and it’s here in which we realize just how much Kya doesn’t know. Watching Kya learn more about the world around her and how it all works is genuinely touching. But something that was fantastic about the film was just how unsettling the whole thing felt.

Even in some of the more uplifting scenes, you always have this lingering feeling of dread in your stomach that refuses to go away no matter what. Newman’s direction here is phenomenal, and the script from Lucy Alibar is extremely bold and gritty. Sure, the film can be a bit all over the place at times, but for the most part, Alibar really made sure this script was as polished as can be.

It would be a sin to talk about a film set in a marsh in North Carolina and not talk about the imagery. Long story short, it’s breathtaking. Director of photography Polly Morgan did a truly astounding job at bringing this marsh to life on the big screen. It’s without a doubt one the best looking films in a long time, and it’ll make you want to get out and explore the wilderness a bit more.

The performances all are excellent as well. Daisy Edgar-Jones delivers what is easily her best performance yet as Kya Clark. After seeing the film, it’s genuinely difficult to imagine anybody else in the role. Nobody else would’ve been able to embody the character as well as she did.

Taylor John Smith is also great as Tate Walker, as is Harris Dickinson as Chase Andrews. The whole cast is incredibly talented and it’s such a relief that they all get their moments in the spotlight in this film.

If you’re on the fence about Where the Crawdads Sing, give it a shot and see what you think. There’s genuinely something for everyone in this film that just so happens to be not only one of the most stylish and refreshing movies of the year, but also one of the best.