Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) in Columbia Pictures’ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.
NOTE: The bulk of the following review was written before this critic learned that Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing, is currently wanted for questioning regarding the decades-old murder of a poacher in Zambia. While I don’t suspect this knowledge would have affected my overall assessment, I do feel that it, at the very least, makes this story of an aspiring naturalist on trial for murder a couple of degrees more interesting.
Is Southern Gothic an endangered genre? It seems like it shouldn’t be; by transplanting the high melodrama of classic Gothic literature into the decadent* American south, Southern Gothic at its best presents an irresistible cocktail of shocking horror, tawdry sex, universal longing, and outrageous characters at the highs and lows of society. But its worldview seems to me like it may soon be as dusty and forgotten as its sprawling, dilapidated estates. Modern cultural sensitivity makes it increasingly hard to justify the “freak show” element that characterizes much of the genre; the current cultural divide makes it that much more difficult to identify with some of its more willfully backwards characters; and the leveling effect of internet culture and late-stage capitalism is quickly eroding regional differences across the country. We can keep writing in the milieu, but will future generations still recognize it?
Judging from the success of Delia Owens’ 2018 novel Where the Crawdads Sing, however, it would seem that there’s some moonshine in the old still yet. Though I will admit it flew under my radar, Owens’ tale of murder, lust, and shellfish taxonomy clearly struck a chord with the masses; it has, to date, sold over 12 million copies, placing it comfortably on “all-time bestseller” lists just a few years out from its publication. Inevitably, it has now hit the big screen– but do its charms translate from the page?
The story begins, as so many Southern Gothic tales do, with a corpse lying face down in a muddy creek. The body is that of Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), a handsome and well-known citizen of the coastal town of Barclay Cove, North Carolina. As speculation swirls among the tight-knit community, the principal suspect seems to be mysterious recluse Catherine “Kya” Clarke (Daisy Edgar-Jones), better known locally as “The Marsh Girl,” with whom Andrews was known to have been having a torrid affair. Pulled from her shack on the outskirts of town and placed unceremoniously in a jail cell, her fate lies in the hands of Tom Milton (David Straithairn), a kindly, Darrow-esque local attorney who has watched Kya grow up. A gentle, painfully shy soul with a keen eye for local wildlife and a knack for sketching them, Kya opens up and relays her hard-luck story to Milton– while Milton does his best to convince a jury of her “peers” that she is not, in fact, a swamp-witch with glowing eyes and the ability to change into a wolf.
Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Tom (David Strathairn) in Columbia Pictures’ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.
As I said, I have not read Owens’ novel, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is a notably faithful adaptation. As in many contemporary page-to-screen films, there is a sense that the characters are reading passages verbatim from the novel, and while there is a certain amount of justification in this case– Kya is a writer, and her narration is presumably being read from her journal– the result often comes across as stuffy and airtight. As in The Goldfinch, there is little recognition of the fact that the printed word works quite differently than the variety produced by human mouths. This is likely a symptom of the fidelity demanded of adaptations by fan culture in the post-Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter world; where screenwriters would once use their source material as a springboard toward a more naturally cinematic work, they are now expected to hew to the text verbatim. A great adaptation should play to the uninitiated as if it were an original work; as it stands, I occasionally felt like I was having the Cliff’s Notes read to me.
But while I may not be a card-carrying Craw-head, I do love me a good Southern Gothic, and this is where Crawdads really comes up short. Stylistically, there’s just nothing Gothic about this film; it all looks as clean and processed as a Netflix original. This is a film about swamp-dwelling recluses with radiant skin and shiny hair, with mouths fully populated with pure white teeth. Kya’s face is dirty when the plot calls for dirt, but there’s little evidence that she sweats; her clothes are torn here and there, but they all look unstained and Downy-fresh. Her clapboard shack is more tastefully furnished than most of my friends’ apartments. And while I acknowledge that this is maybe the point– that the “Marsh Girl” is actually more down-to-earth than any of her town-dwelling counterparts– she’s presented as so down-to-earth that it’s difficult to imagine how the stories started swirling in the first place. She’s just, like, a normal person, and I kept hoping she’d turn out to be a little weird.
Young Kya (Jojo Regina) in Columbia Pictures’ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.
For what it is, Where the Crawdads Sing is serviceable enough. Edgar-Jones is a lovely screen presence (between this and FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven, she seems to have the market cornered this year on small-town murder mysteries), and she does make one feel for Kya’s plight. The central mystery is gripping, and it’s hard not to cheer for Straithairn as he calmly unravels the prosecution’s argument. And as overly polished as the film is, director Olivia Newman does effectively shoot her marshland locations, giving the town and its wilds real character. This is a world it’s easy to want to get lost in– which, I imagine, is probably a significant factor in the book’s success.
But that’s also kind of the thing: I shouldn’t want to spend time in the world of a Southern Gothic potboiler. When I go to see a movie about a swamp-dwelling outcast wrapped up in a murder trial after exposing the sordid underbelly of a well-to-do town, I want to walk out feeling vaguely unpleasant; I want to smell the grime of the location, the stench of human monstrosity. Crawdads does its best to remove the guilt from the guilty pleasure of its trappings, and while I’m sure that goes a long way toward explaining its popularity, it also makes it a far less interesting affair than it might have been. Where the Crawdads Sing is handsomely made, and I have no doubt it will satisfy its target audience, but it’s just too tasteful for my taste.
* – That’s “decadent” in the original “generations of incest” sense of the word, not the contemporary “triple-chocolate mousse” definition.
Where the Crawdads Sing
2022
dir. Olivia Newman
125 min.
Opens Thursday, 7/14 @ Kendall Square Cinema and theaters everywhere.
