‘Where The Crawdads Sing’ Review: Daisy Edgar-Jones Can’t Bring This Dull Adaptation To Life

It’s usually a bad omen when a film opens up with a series of landscape drone shots. It signals that the filmmaking to come will likely not surpass that initial entrance; that the method chosen to introduce the ensuing two hours is through hovering depictions of scenery that you could pluck off of Google images. Maybe I’m a little demanding, but it’s not asking too much to consider the consequences of how a director decides to guide their audience into a film, and what impression they want to make before there’s much of a chance to make our acquaintance. There’s a certain implicit entitlement that is inseparable to those pesky drone shots of skyscraper buildings, rolling mountains, or, in this case, the lush marshlands of North Carolina, shot on location for Olivia Newman’s adaptation of “Where the Crawdads Sing.” It indicates that minimal creativity could not be employed at one of a film’s most crucial moments because there is a confidence that what’s to follow will surely make up for it.

This is not the case with “Where the Crawdads Sing,” Newman’s sophomore feature following her positively-received indie film “First Match,” which got distribution from Netflix in 2018. Tapped by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, to helm the hotly anticipated take on Delia Owens’ best-selling novel, Newman’s film appears faithful to the source material though takes few liberties in enhancing it for the visual medium. Whereas the novel is told in three linear parts, the film favors a dueling narrative structure. It frames heroine Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) – full name Catherine Danielle Clark – in the story’s present-day of 1970 on trial for the murder of her former lover, while shifting back and forth between the ongoing homicide case and Kya’s upbringing in the ‘50s through to the present.

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We witness Kya’s (played as a child by Jojo Regina) destructive family environment with an abusive father (Garret Dillahunt) and a mother (Ahna O’Reilly) who could no longer withstand the violence. The latter is the first to desert the Clark family. Quickly followed by the rest of Kya’s siblings, Kya is the only one to remain with her father, whose temper is briefly quelled by a relinquishing of the dreaded bottle. But a letter from her long-lost mother drags her father back to drink, and without revealing the letter’s contents, he abandons Kya soon after. This leaves the young girl all alone in the marsh. Sturdy and resourceful, Kya becomes entirely self-sufficient, selling what she can catch and trap at the local gas station while her well-being is lightly monitored by the owner, Jumpin (Sterling Macer Jr.) and his wife, Mabel (Michael Hyatt). Though poverty had already ostracized her from much of her community in Barkley Cove, Kya becomes further perceived as something of a local legend due to her reclusive marsh-dwelling. She’s given the unkind moniker of “Marsh Girl” by the townsfolk when all she’s done is struggle to survive.

But it’s love that ultimately leads Kya astray, as she finds her youthful heart torn between the affections of two boys: Tate (Taylor John Smith), a neighboring, childhood friend who eventually heads off to college, and Chase (Harris Dickinson), a local, “normal” boy from town who ends up mirroring the abusive patterns of her father. Albeit, neither of these romantic relationships is particularly believable, which could be said of any relationship Kya is meant to have with another character in the film. The script does little to depict emotional connection any farther below the surface, preferring clichéd dialogue and overbearing music cues from composer Mychael Danna as a substitute for tangible character development.

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So, when Chase ends up dead, all fingers unsurprisingly point to the outsider he was fooling around with. The interloping slut. The unwanted foreigner who has, as reticent as the townsfolk would be to admit, always been one of them. As we learn about the life that led her to the trial, we observe Kya’s interactions with her kindly, self-appointed defense lawyer, Tom Milton (David Strathairn, always a pleasure). Milton first hears tell of the case at a local watering hole and understands that the odds are unfairly stacked against this defendant. It’s the sort of act of kindness that Kya ultimately relies upon in order to move any mountains, like Tate teaching her how to read and write and forging the path to Kya being a published author. Kya made it this far all on her own in a story that is ostensibly, in part, about male violence and female strength, but these extra pushes from sympathetic men are what really allow her to flourish. It’s a weird sort of messaging that makes the intended, powerful conclusion a bit legless. As someone unfamiliar with the book, it has me curious whether these loose threads are somehow a bit better hidden on the page.

Overall, the finished effort of “Where the Crawdads Sing” comes off like bare minimum technical competence to produce an underwhelming novel adaptation. Aside from marginally playing around with the narrative form, lack of inventiveness is inextricable from the idea that this story didn’t need to be brought to a visual medium. It is right to feel nervous at the opening drone shots coupled with Kya’s hand-holding narration, which places mostly everything that could potentially be left unsaid – and therefore more impactful – fully articulated and thus robbed of weight. A shortage of meaningfulness could be equally applied to the editing and cinematography, lovely images of the dank Carolina marsh (the film’s second misunderstood character) undercut by the fact that the film heavily relies on this inherent loveliness at face value. A series of shots of Kya looking out at the water as the hours pass are each beautiful and textured, yet uninspired in their communication of the passage of time.

In the end, “Where the Crawdads Sing” can be defined by persistently obtuse tact –  from the character relationships conveyed through exchanges that are only meant to have meaning, to lingering shots that carry too much meaning, and a story that pulls you along at a tepid pace more due to obligation than a sense of narrative propulsion. There is minimal tension in spite of clear stakes, but because we never get closer to Kya than arm’s length, it never seems like she’s in any real danger. We are meant to side with her and empathize with her as the abused, underdog outsider in that fact of character alone. Nothing appears to simmer below the surface, and everything rings hollow because of it. This perseveres even as we are witnessing extreme acts of domestic assault, which are treated with the sensitivity of a soap opera. Not a YA novel, the film has a distinctly adolescent approach to the material: a film overflowing with so much apparently unbridled emotion and meaning that there is, paradoxically, hardly any there.

Fans of the book will most likely enjoy the film. The screenplay was adapted by Lucy Alibar, who co-penned the Oscar-nominated 2012 film “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which was a similarly superficial take on the American South. But this time, Alibar’s script was sourced from a white author who both depicts questionable Black characters and has, let’s just say, a complicated relationship with the country of Africa.

Still, “Where the Crawdads Sing” will likely satisfy those who are interested in seeing the story they love brought to life by a cast of talented actors doing everything they can with the unchallenging script (Dickinson is terrifying, John Smith is a puppy dog; Edgar-Jones services as soft-spoken Kya, a demure, unemotive character who doesn’t quite translate as headstrong). Sadly, I am not one of these people. [C-]

“Where the Crawdads Sing” will be released in theaters on July 15.