When Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson) is discovered dead in the swamp, Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones) becomes the prime suspect in his presumed murder.  Already a bit of a social pariah for living out in the marsh on her own, the townspeople are quick to pass judgment on her, but Tom Milton (David Strathairn), a public defender steps up to the plate to try and clear her name in court. 

Olivia Newman directs Where the Crawdads Sing for release by Columbia Pictures from a script by Lucy Alibar adapted from the hit novel of the same name by Delia Owens.  The murder mystery is bathed in golden sunlight and filtered through the marshland fauna which seems to be trying to evoke a strange sense of Americana nostalgia with its 50s and 60s setting. 

The film splits its time between two major stories, the courtroom and Kya’s past from childhood through adulthood. It’s a conventional enough framing device, but in the context of the story, it makes little sense as this is not testimony and it is not even like Kya is telling Tom these stories of her past so he can build a defense of character. The script goes out of its way even to stress that Kya really is not giving her lawyer much to work with insofar as a defense goes. Couple this choice with narration that is constantly explaining how Kya is feeling instead of trusting Jones, and Jojo Regina who plays Kay in the childhood scenes, to convey the emotional through lines, Crawdads is a bit of a mess as a film as it relies far too heavily on its novelistic structure and does not make a successful leap off of the page to the big screen. 

To make matters worse, performances from the trio range from bland to uninspired. Poor Jones as the lead has such an underwritten character whose only major moments are that of trauma. We are supposed to get a sense that she is some swamp witch-like resident, the kind of person the neighborhood kids would sooner end a game of softball than venture into her property to retrieve a foul hit, but it’s all conveyed through conjecture from the townspeople and the script is lacking the conviction. She likes nature and feathers and lives a mostly solitary life is about how deep into the realm of strange the script allows for.  It has the benefit of the time period so that she can skip out on regular school to tend to the house, the convenience of Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt) who run the local store and show compassion for her, and just the most incredible strokes of luck that hit exactly when Kya has her back against a corner.  Because of that, we never get to see her really overcome anything of narrative interest; a single conversation about her enrollment into a group home, or the briefest talk of her land at risk of being bought.  

As for the two love interests Smith’s Tate has almost no chemistry with Kya and even less presence on screen. Matched by Dickinson’s Chase who comes out of nowhere and rocks the narrative off course, there is very little lead-up to his and Kya’s relationship that forms a central part of the prosecution’s argument when Chase is discovered dead in the mud. The three are just going through the motions, here, as the script denies them of a long and plentiful courtship, and what few scenes of flirtation that do exist in the film are all played incredibly rigid, and the camera captures them from a distance.  Tate, in a display of his upstanding morals, is very careful and timid around Kya as opposed to the more forceful and bullish Chase, but both men have the same thing on their minds.  It’s all very black and white as the script tries to set up who is good and who is wrong for Kya and establish plenty of motives for the eventual crime, but the entire handling of it is pretty gross as Kya, throughout the narrative and in addition to only having her character be established through the abuse she has suffered, is viewed now as an object to be won.   

The most confusing thing, however, about Crawdads is the employment of the framing device of the courtroom.  The formula is nothing new here, a witness is called to give testimony, cut to a flashback, and back in the courtroom, the defense adds texture to what we just saw by offering up an alternative account.  Here, the flashbacks do not appear to be delivered in the courtroom, or even to Tom.  It is an unassociated, stream of conscious memories that Kya is having that does not do much in the way of building a defense.  It informs us as the audience of what the townsfolk know about “the marsh girl” but it serves no real purpose in the structure of the film.  Narrated by Kya through voice-over, it is full of poetic longing and language about nature that surrounds them, and it’s all well and good until that same poetic language filters into the dialogue and the apparent wild girl is talking in complicated metaphors about the cruelties of life and love.  Crawdads‘ roots as a novel are ever present as the manner in which these characters speak is forgivable on the page, but when spoken aloud it all seems incredibly foreign and strange. 

Where the Crawdads Sing is a disappointing murder mystery that focuses on all the boring parts of what otherwise could have been a very engaging thriller.  The mantra of every screenwriting teacher – show, don’t tell – is employed here, but the problem is that what we are shown is of little narrative interest or context to the central crime.  Even with all of Kya’s backstory, very little of it informs the murder and the film seems quick to wrap everything up as it nears closer to its end at 125 minutes.  The reveal, when it finally does occur, is so unsatisfying because the script has denied us greater context.  It is the one place where it fails to show instead of tell, and that is in what actually happened to Chase Andrews.  It is a small ask given that the film had not shied away from violence when it was Kya on the receiving end. We know the facts, sure, but we are hurried along as the film opts to try its hand at a shocking twist in the final moments instead of a cathartic and informative scene atop the tower. In that sense, it is a successful thriller as we do have all the pieces to the puzzle, we know how it all fits together, but Newman frustratingly refuses to let us see the full picture.