Daisy Edgar-Jones, stars as Kya Clark, a young woman who has been living on her own in a cabin in swampy Carolina for about a decade after her parents and siblings left. When a man she had been secretly seeing dies in mysterious circumstances, Kya is arrested and put on trial. There is not a lot of evidence but the prosecutors are banking on the jury tapping into their innate prejudice against the loner, uneducated ‘marsh girl’ who has been shunned by others all her life.
This is based on a hugely popular bestseller Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, though I have to admit that I had not heard of it prior to the film being made, so I was able to approach it without any preconceptions. The events surrounding the trial threatened to have me hooked and I really wanted to spend more time with that part of the story. Instead, there is an overly long depiction of her childhood and, even worse, a syrupy epilogue covering the rest of Kya’s life that includes a blindingly obvious twist ending.
It is competently enough made and Edgar-Jones, a British actress I only know from Cold Feet, is very convincing as Kya. The other characters though feel a bit too tropey…the eloquent, principled, lawyer in a white suit defending the marsh girl, a noble black couple who run the local store and befriend Kya, the school jock who is, of course, the quarterback, and the sensitive guy who falls for the girl.
Diverting enough but very predictable.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10