Where the Crawdads Sing sags with the weight of expectations

They’re expectations born not from being part of a big franchise or because of some A-list cast – not that Daisy Edgar-Jones isn’t without a devoted following after her breakout role in Normal People.

The 2018 novel on which the film adaptation is based has sold 12 million copies around the world, and Reese Witherspoon snapped up the screen rights. It’s not hyperbolic to call Where the Crawdads Sing a publishing blockbuster, with a fanbase as passionate as moviegoers are about the next Marvel flick.

So, yes, there are very specific and hyped expectations. But high expectations are sometimes followed by crushing disappointments.

If you’re someone who hasn’t read the book, the film adaptation is fine. It has some decent performances, the cinematography is sometimes quite beautiful and the storyline has clarity.

Sure, it’s slow-moving in parts, the characters all remain unknowable and it doesn’t leave a lasting impression, but there are far worse cinematic crimes. Without any expectations, Where the Crawdads Sing is passable.

But if you’re someone who has read – and loved – the book, Where the Crawdads Sing is unlikely to meet your expectations, even the less lofty ones.

The book’s fans wax lyrical about the novel’s evocative sense of place, that its setting of the North Carolina marshes is a bigger character than any of the actual human ones. Readers become lost in the pages because author Delia Owens is able to conjure the specificity of a place with prose.

The film adaptation lacks that poetry – and not just because it was filmed in Louisiana and not North Carolina because, let’s face it, most Australians would not be able to tell the difference.

A run-of-the-mill drama would be acceptable to many audiences who were looking for a diverting couple of hours, but it’s not going to cut it when the source material is so beloved, and when those existing fans want a film that matches the rich world that have been swirling in their minds.

Against that bar, Where the Crawdads Sing is a lemon.

Set between the mid-1950s and 1970, it tells the story of Kya Clark (Edgar-Jones/Jojo Regina as a child) but the locals of her small-minded town called her “the marsh girl”.

The youngest child of an isolated and impoverished family in the marshes, she suffers through the abandonment of her mother and her older siblings when they successively leave the abusive household.

Eventually, her alcoholic and embittered father (Garrett Dillahunt) leaves too and still a child, Kya is left to fend for herself. Resourceful and smart, she survives with only the help of the kindly owners of the general store, Mabel (Michael Hyatt) and Jumpin (Sterling Macer Jr), who buy the mussels she fishes from the marsh and gives her clothes donated to the church.

She’s ostracised by the town and only learns to read from Tate (Taylor John Smith/Luke David Blumm as a child), a young boy and friend of her brother’s.

By the time she’s a young woman, Kya still knows little of the world outside her marshes but strikes up a romance with Tate and then later with Chase (Harris Dickinson), the well-to-do son of a prominent local family.

When Chase is found dead at the bottom of a fire tower, Kya is accused, arrested and trialled for murder. The only people who believe she’s innocent are Mabel and Jumpin and Tom Milton (David Strathairn), a lawyer who knows she’s had a bad run.

The courtroom drama at the centre of the narrative is far less interesting than the character moments. The film is structured so that the death and the arrest happen at the beginning and Kya’s story is revealed in flashback from there.

Core to why this film adaptation falls flat is director Olivia Newman fails to establish a strong connection between Kya and the marshes – they seem to co-exist but not as one. We’re told she’s a wildling of the marshes, that she’s taken on the characteristics of her environment but it’s never shown.

All throughout, Kya is a cipher. She remains at a distance from the audience, the film unable to properly convey the interiority of a character who doesn’t much speak.

The choice to cast Edgar-Jones in the role makes a lot of sense. Like Where the Crawdads Sing, Normal People relied on audiences investing in two characters who don’t sing out their feelings at every turn, but this film doesn’t have the sophistication in either the script or in its tone to draw out Kya’s inner life.

Without that investment in her fate, Where the Crawdads Sing will have to settle for middling. Of course, most of the book’s fans won’t.

Rating: 2.5/5

Where the Crawdads Sing is in cinemas now

Originally published as Where the Crawdads Sing sags with the weight of expectations