Where the Crawdads Sing

By Evan Pulhard, Contributing Editor

What a nice film produced by Reese Witherspoon. I’ll discuss more on our grading scale as we go, but for now just know that Where the Crawdads Sing is at worst piss hard. And seriously, it’s a full-throbber in at least two scenes, all the while downplaying the protagonist’s sexual exploits. The only disappointment was no nip-slips or frontal nudity, making it a modest PG-13. Sometimes the candor of a gaping orifice, albeit for even half a second, tells more than a five-minute hand holding scene; but I digress.

This adaptation was tame; a nice family film you might say, beautiful in every way, though based on the darker 2018 coming-of-age murder mystery novel of the same name by American author Delia Owens. It’s a more sterile attempt to reinterpret the tragically gruesome beginnings of Kya Danielle Clark, the Marsh Girl, as the townsfolk called her, an abandoned child surviving on her own in the marshlands of North Carolina. She was an outcast, abused, and mostly alone.

Set in the 1950’s, the film’s timeline intertwines the setting from the court room, where Kya was on trial, accused of murdering the town big-shot, her abusive, ex-boyfriend Chase; to her childhood and upbringing in the Carolina marsh among the reeds and crawdads…

The resourceful, gritty spunk of the Marsh Girl’s spirit pulls you in to the tale as she survived and found a home, a teacher and a calling in the wilds of the NC swamp. The depth of Kya’s character was a redeeming quality to this adaptation. What might be imagined as incredible struggle by many was portrayed as folly, a frolic through the marsh, an adventure on the coastal swamps.   

Kya was beautifully portrayed by Daisy Edgar-Jones. Her character is championed by the only man she ever truly loved, Tate, portrayed by Taylor John Smith. Tate’s encouragement helped Kya become known as an artist and a successfully published writer. Her journals of the flora and fauna of the coastal wetlands of the Carolinas were unorthodox and simple, beautiful and precise, a tribute to the mark left by her feral beginnings and nature’s tutelage.

As you’re drawn in, you can’t help but route for Kya. You will applaud and cheer when she is acquitted of murder charges.  She wins you over so hard, you will feel vindication when you find out in the end that she did in fact kill Chase Andrews. You’ll see her resourceful, determined and beautiful. Where the Crawdad’s Sing is worth the watch. And you’ll find yourself contemplating a romp with your nearest A-cup cutie-pie fantasy the next time you smell a seashell.  Conch goes the weasel.