where the crawdads sing movie reviews rotten tomatoes

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, where the crawdads sing.

Now streaming on:

The cicadas buzz and the moss drips and the sunset casts a golden shimmer on the water every single evening. But while “Where the Crawdads Sing” is rich in atmosphere, it’s sorely lacking in actual substance or suspense.

Maybe it was an impossible task, taking the best-selling source material and turning it into a cinematic experience that would please both devotees and newbies alike. Delia Owens ’ novel became a phenomenon in part as a Reese Witherspoon book club selection; Witherspoon is a producer on “Where the Crawdads Sing,” and Taylor Swift wrote and performs the theme song, adding to the expectation surrounding the film’s arrival.

But the result of its pulpy premise is a movie that’s surprisingly inert. Director Olivia Newman , working from a script by Lucy Alibar , jumps back and forth without much momentum between a young woman’s murder trial and the recollections of her rough-and-tumble childhood in 1950s and ‘60s North Carolina. (Alibar also wrote “ Beasts of the Southern Wild ,” which “Where the Crawdads Sing” resembles somewhat as a story of a resourceful little girl’s survival within a squalid, swampy setting.)  

It is so loaded with plot that it ends up feeling superficial, rendering major revelations as rushed afterthoughts. For a film about a brave woman who’s grown up in the wild, living by her own rules, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is unusually tepid and restrained. And aside from Daisy Edgar-Jones ’ multi-layered performance as its central figure, the characters never evolve beyond a basic trait or two.

We begin in October 1969 in the marshes of fictional Barkley Cove, North Carolina, where a couple of boys stumble upon a dead body lying in the muck. It turns out to be Chase Andrews, a popular big fish in this insular small pond. And Edgar-Jones’ Kya, with whom he’d once had an unlikely romantic entanglement, becomes the prime suspect. She’s an easy target, having long been ostracized and vilified as The Marsh Girl—or when townsfolk are feeling particularly derisive toward her, That Marsh Girl. Flashbacks reveal the abuse she and her family suffered at the hands of her volatile, alcoholic father ( Garret Dillahunt , harrowing in just a few scenes), and the subsequent abandonment she endured as everyone left her, one by one, to fend for herself—starting with her mother. These vivid, early sections are the most emotionally powerful, with Jojo Regina giving an impressive, demanding performance in her first major film role as eight-year-old Kya.

As she grows into her teens and early 20s and Edgar-Jones takes over, two very different young men shape her formative years. There’s the too-good-to-be-true Tate (Taylor John Smith ), a childhood friend who teaches her to read and write and becomes her first love. (“There was something about that boy that eased the tautness in my chest,” Kya narrates, one of many clunky examples of transferring Owens’ words from page to screen.) And later, there’s the arrogant and bullying Chase ( Harris Dickinson ), who’s obviously bad news from the start, something the reclusive Kya is unable to recognize.

But what she lacks in emotional maturity, she makes up for in curiosity about the natural world around her, and she becomes a gifted artist and autodidact. Edgar-Jones embodies Kya’s raw impulses while also subtly registering her apprehension and mistrust. Pretty much everyone lets her down and underestimates her, except for the kindly Black couple who run the local convenience store and serve as makeshift parents (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt , bringing much-needed warmth, even though there’s not much to their characters). David Strathairn gets the least to work with in one of the film’s most crucial roles as Kya’s attorney: a sympathetic, Atticus Finch type who comes out of retirement to represent her.

This becomes especially obvious in the film’s courtroom scenes, which are universally perfunctory and offer only the blandest cliches and expected dramatic beats. Every time “Where the Crawdads Sing” cuts back to Kya’s murder trial—which happens seemingly out of nowhere, with no discernible rhythm or reason—the pacing drags and you’ll wish you were back in the sun-dappled marshes, investigating its many creatures. ( Polly Morgan provides the pleasing cinematography.)

What actually ends up happening here, though, is such a terrible twist—and it all plays out in such dizzyingly speedy fashion—that it’s unintentionally laughable. You get the sensation that everyone involved felt the need to cram it all in, yet still maintain a manageable running time. If you’ve read the book, you know what happened to Chase Andrews; if you haven’t, I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it here. But I will say I had a variety of far more intriguing conclusions swirling around in my head in the car ride home, and you probably will, too. 

Now playing in theaters.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

Now playing

The Truth vs. Alex Jones

Brian tallerico.

Marya E. Gates

Dusk for a Hitman

Robert daniels.

Little Wing

Chicken for Linda!

Arthur the King

Film credits.

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault.

125 minutes

Daisy Edgar-Jones as Catherine 'Kya' Clark

Taylor John Smith as Tate Walker

Harris Dickinson as Chase Andrews

Michael Hyatt as Mabel

Sterling MacEr Jr. as Jumpin'

David Strathairn as Tom Milton

Garret Dillahunt as Pa

Eric Ladin as Eric Chastain

Ahna O'Reilly as Ma

Jojo Regina as Young Kya

• Olivia Newman

Writer (based upon the novel by)

• Delia Owens
• Lucy Alibar

Cinematographer

• Polly Morgan
• Alan Edward Bell
• Mychael Danna

Latest blog posts

The 2024 Chicago Palestine Film Festival Highlights

Man on the Moon Is Still the Cure for the Biopic Blues

Part of the Solution: Matthew Modine on Acting, Empathy, and Hard Miles

The Imperiled Women of Alex Garland’s Films

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Review: A Wild Heroine, a Soothing Tale

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as an orphaned girl in the marshes of North Carolina in this tame adaptation of Delia Owens’s popular novel.

• Share full article

By A.O. Scott

“Where the Crawdads Sing,” Delia Owens’s first novel, is one of the best-selling fiction books in recent years , and if nothing else the new movie version can help you understand why.

Streamlining Owens’s elaborate narrative while remaining faithful to its tone and themes, the director, Olivia Newman, and the screenwriter, Lucy Alibar ( “Beasts of the Southern Wild” ), weave a courtroom drama around a romance that is also a hymn to individual resilience and the wonder of the natural world. Though it celebrates a wild, independent heroine, the film — like the book — is as decorous and soothing as a country-club luncheon.

Set in coastal North Carolina (though filmed in Louisiana), “Where the Crawdads Sing” spends a lot of time in the vast, sun-dappled wetlands its heroine calls home. The disapproving residents of the nearby hamlet of Barkley Cove refer to her as “the marsh girl.” In court, she’s addressed as Catherine Danielle Clark. We know her as Kya.

Played in childhood by Jojo Regina and then by Daisy Edgar-Jones (known for her role in “Normal People” ), Kya is an irresistible if not quite coherent assemblage of familiar literary tropes and traits. Abused and abandoned, she is like the orphan princess in a fairy-tale, stoic in the face of adversity and skilled in the ways of survival. She is brilliant and beautiful, tough and innocent, a natural-born artist and an intuitive naturalist, a scapegoat and something close to a superhero.

That’s a lot. Edgar-Jones has the good sense — or perhaps the brazen audacity — to play Kya as a fairly normal person who finds herself in circumstances that it would be an understatement to describe as improbable. Kya lives most of her life outside of human society, amid the flora and fauna of the marsh, and sometimes she resembles the feral creature the townspeople imagine her to be. Mostly, though, she seems like a skeptical, practical-minded young woman who wants to be left alone, except when she doesn’t.

Kya attracts the attention of two young men. One, a dreamy, blue-eyed fisherman’s son named Tate (Taylor John Smith), who shares her love of shells, feathers and the creatures associated with them. Companions in childhood, they become sweethearts as teenagers, until Tate goes off to college, and Kya gets mixed up with Chase (Harris Dickinson), a handsome cad whose dead body is eventually found at the bottom of a fire tower deep in the marshlands.

Eventually but also right at the beginning. The movie begins with Chase’s death, in October, 1969. Kya is charged with murder, and her trial alternates with the story of her life up until that point. Her mother (Ahna O’Reilly) and siblings flee the violence of an abusive, alcoholic father (Garret Dillahunt), who eventually takes off too, leaving Kya on her own in possession of a metal motorboat, a fixer-upper with a screened-in porch and a curious and creative spirit.

“Where the Crawdads Sing” takes place in the ’50s and ’60s, which on the evidence of the film were uneventful decades in America, especially the American South. Kya’s hermit-like existence — she attends school for one day, doesn’t learn to read until Tate teaches her and has no radio or television — feels a bit like an alibi for the film’s detachment from history. The local store where she sells mussels and gases up her boat is run by a Black couple, Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt), who nurture and protect her and seem to have no problems (or children) of their own.

Kya’s outsider status — bolstered by the presence of David Strathairn as her Atticus Finch-like defense attorney — gives the movie a notion of social concern. Equally faint is the hint of Southern Gothic that sometimes perfumes the swampy air. But for a story about sex, murder, family secrets and class resentments, the temperature is awfully mild, as if a Tennessee Williams play had been sent to Nicholas Sparks for a rewrite.

Where the Crawdads Sing Rated PG-13. Wild but tame. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

As “Sex and the City” became more widely available on Netflix, younger viewers have watched it with a critical eye . But its longtime millennial and Gen X fans can’t quit.

Hoa Xuande had only one Hollywood credit when he was chosen to lead “The Sympathizer,” the starry HBO adaptation of a prize-winning novel. He needed all the encouragement he could get .

Even before his new film “Civil War” was released, the writer-director Alex Garland faced controversy over his vision of a divided America  with Texas and California as allies.

Theda Hammel’s directorial debut, “Stress Positions,” a comedy about millennials weathering the early days of the pandemic , will ask audiences to return to a time that many people would rather forget.

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Review: The Bestselling Novel Turned Into a Compelling Wild-Child Tale

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kya, the venerable Marsh Girl, in a mystery as dark as it is romantic.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• ‘Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver’ Review: An Even More Rote Story, but a Bigger and Better Battle 2 days ago
• ‘Abigail’ Review: A Remake of ‘Dracula’s Daughter’ Turns Into a Brutally Monotonous Genre Mashup 3 days ago
• Why I Wasn’t Scared by ‘Civil War’ 7 days ago

Sometimes a movie will turn softer than you thought it would — more sunny and upbeat and romantic, with a happier ending. Then there’s the kind of movie that turns darker than you expect, with an ominous undertow and an ending that kicks you in the shins. “ Where the Crawdads Sing ” is the rare movie that conforms to both those dynamics at once.

Adapted from Delia Owens ’ debut novel, which has sold 12 million copies since it was published in 2018, the movie is about a young woman whose identity is mired in physical and spiritual harshness. Kya Clark ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ) has grown up all by herself in a shack on a marshy bayou outside Barkley Cove, N.C. When we meet her, it’s 1969 and she’s being put on trial for murder. A young man who Kya was involved with has fallen to his death from a six-story fire tower. Was foul play involved? If so, was Kya the culprit? The local law enforcers don’t seem too interested in evidence. They’ve targeted Kya, who is known by the locals as Marsh Girl. For most of her life, she has been a scary local legend — the scandalous wild child, the wolf girl, the uncivilized outsider. Now, perhaps, she’s become a scapegoat.

The film then flashes back to 1953, when Kya is about 10 (and played by the feisty Jojo Regina), and her life unfolds as the redneck version of a Dickensian nightmare, with a father (Garret Dillahunt) who’s a violent abuser, a mother (Ahna O’Reilly) who abandons her, and a brother who soon follows. Kya is left with Pa, who retains his cruel ways (when a letter arrives from her mother, he burns it right in front of her), though he eases up on the beatings. Barefoot and undernourished, she tries to go to school and lasts one day; the taunting of the other kids sends her packing. Pa himself soon ditches Kya, leaving the girl to raise herself in that marshland shack.

Popular on Variety

All very dark. Yet with these stark currents in place, “Where the Crawdads Sing” segues into episodes with Kya as a teenager and young woman, and for a while the film seems to turn into a kind of badlands YA reverie. Kya may have a past filled with torment, but on her own she’s free — to do what she likes, to find innovative ways to survive (she digs up mussels at dawn and sells them to the Black proprietors of a local general store, played by Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr., who become her caretakers in town), and to chart her own destiny.

You’d expect someone known as Marsh Girl to have a few rough edges. Remember Jodie Foster’s feral backwoods ragamuffin in “Nell”? (She, too, was from North Carolina.) Yet Kya, for a wild child, is pretty refined, with thick flowy hair parted in the middle, a wardrobe of billowy rustic dresses, and a way of speaking that makes her sound like she grew up as the daughter of a couple of English teachers. (Unlike just about everyone else in the movie, she lacks even a hint of a drawl.) She does watercolor drawings of the seashells in the marshland, and her gift for making art is singular. She’s like Huck Finn meets Pippi Longstocking by way of Alanis Morissette.

The English actor Daisy Edgar-Jones, who has mostly worked on television (“Normal People,” “War of the Worlds”), has a doleful, earnest-eyed sensuality reminiscent of the quality that Alana Haim brought to “Licorice Pizza.” She gives Kya a quiet surface but makes her wily and vibrantly poised — which isn’t necessarily wrong , but it cuts against (and maybe reveals) our own prejudices, putting the audience in the position of thinking that someone known as Marsh Girl might not come off as quite this self-possessed. Kya meets a local boy, Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith), who has the look of a preppie dreamboat and teaches her, out of the goodness of his heart, to read and write. It looks like the two are falling in love, at least until it’s time for him to go off to college in Raleigh. Despite his protestations of devotion, Kya knows that he’s not coming back.

You could say that “Where the Crawdads Sing” starts out stormy and threatening, then turns romantic and effusive, then turns foreboding again. Yet that wouldn’t express the way the film’s light and dark tones work together. The movie, written by Lucy Alibar (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”) and directed by Olivia Newman with a confidence and visual vivacity that carry you along (the lusciously crisp cinematography is by Polly Morgan), turns out to be a myth of resilience. It’s Kya’s story, and in her furtive way she keeps undermining the audience’s perceptions about her.

The scenes of Kya’s murder trial are fascinating, because they’re not staged with the usual courtroom-movie cleverness. Kya is defended by Tim Milton ( David Strathairn ), who knew her as a girl and has come out of retirement to see justice done. In his linen suits, with his Southern-gentleman logic, he demolishes one witness after another, but mostly because there isn’t much of a case against Kya. The fellow she’s accused of killing, Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), is the one she took up with after Tate abandoned her, and he’s a sketchier shade of preppie player, with a brusque manner that is less than trustworthy. He keeps her separate from his classy friends in town (at one point we learn why), and his scoundrel tendencies just mount from there. Did she have a motive for foul play?

“Where the Crawdads Sing” is at once a mystery, a romance, a back-to-nature reverie full of gnarled trees and hanging moss, and a parable of women’s power and independence in a world crushed under by masculine will. The movie has a lot of elements that will remind you of other films, like “The Man in the Moon,” the 1991 drama starring Reese Witherspoon (who is one of the producers here). But they combine in an original way. The ending is a genuine jaw-dropper, and while I wouldn’t go near revealing it, I’ll just say that this is a movie about fighting back against male intransigence that has the courage of its outsider spirit.

Reviewed at Museum of Modern Art, July 11, 2022. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 125 MIN.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Releasing release of a 3000 Pictures production. Producers: Reese Witherspoon, Lauren Neustadter. Executive producers: Rhonda Fehr, Betsy Danbury.
• Crew: Director: Olivia Newman. Screenplay: Lucy Alibar. Camera: Polly Morgan. Editor: Alan Edward Bell. Music: Mychael Danna.
• With: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., David Strathairn, Jayson Warner Smith, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna O’Reilly, Eric Ladin.

More From Our Brands

Kevin abstract, lil nas x premiere new song ‘tennessee’ at coachella, inside the hidden world of vip perks at america’s marquee sports arenas, sprinter gabby thomas says diamond league flosports deal is a drag, be tough on dirt but gentle on your body with the best soaps for sensitive skin, csi: vegas star reacts to cancellation, shares message for fans: ‘we did it all for you’, verify it's you, please log in.

Screen Rant

Where the crawdads sing review: gorgeous visuals clash with storytelling issues.

However, as a movie, Where the Crawdads Sing stumbles a bit in its transition from page to screen, though it is aided by a great lead performance.

Book-to-movie adaptations can be notoriously difficult to nail. Get things right, and fans of the source material will sing its praises. Get things wrong, though, and the movie will become infamous. In the case of  Where the Crawdads Sing , Olivia Newman's adaptation of Delia Owens' best-selling novel, there is a very good chance it will find itself in the former category when it arrives in theaters. The gorgeously-shot movie is incredibly faithful to the book and will no doubt delight those who have eagerly devoured its pages. However, as a movie, Where the Crawdads Sing stumbles a bit in its transition from page to screen, though it is aided by a great lead performance.

Picking up in 1969, the sleepy town of Barkley Cove, North Carolina is shaken by the apparent murder of golden boy Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). There is a shocking lack of evidence found at the crime scene, but rumors have already put a suspect on trial: The famed "Marsh Girl," a Barkley Cove legend who has been the subject of scorn for years. In reality, the Marsh Girl is Kya Clark ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ), a shy girl with a deep passion for nature. Turning back the clock several years,  Where the Crawdads Sing digs into Kya's life, her relationship with the surrounding marsh, and whether she might be involved in Chase's untimely demise.

Related:  Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris Review: Lesley Manville Shines In Wholesome 1950s Tale

Where the Crawdads Sing has been a book club favorite for years now, and as a result, its adaptation has some high expectations attached. Luckily, it is clear from almost the very beginning that Newman and her team have nothing but the utmost respect for the source material. Lucy Alibar has penned a screenplay that is filled with numerous details and lines lifted straight from the book, making this one of the most faithful adaptations in recent memory. To be sure,  Where the Crawdads Sing makes some adjustments here and there, but they are relatively small. By filming on location, Newman is able to make the most of actual marshes in the South, and cinematographer Polly Morgan does an excellent job at showcasing these beautiful natural landscapes. In many ways,  Where the Crawdads Sing really brings Kya's world to life in vivid fashion, including through the carefully detailed work of production designer Sue Chan.

However, there are places where the movie's devotion to the book causes it to run aground. Literally, in a way, as  Where the Crawdads Sing  holds some pacing issues. There are key moments in Kya's murder trial that should be filled with tension and suspense; instead, they lack the necessary urgency. On the specific topic of the trial, the movie suffers early on from jarring cuts between the past and the present. These get better as Chase's prominence in the plot increases, but the first portion of  Where the Crawdads Sing can't seem to find a suitable balance between Kya's early life and her uneasy future. Additionally, in its attempt to bring as many book moments to life as possible, the movie finds itself grappling with a few awkward moments that, while reading fine on the page, don't exactly translate well to a visual medium.

Where the Crawdads Sing 's greatest strength is Edgar-Jones (and Jojo Regina, who plays a younger Kya). Kya is a unique main character and Edgar-Jones does a great job in bringing her to life. Whether it is by expressing delighted wonderment over a gifted feather or retreating in on herself in the face of a potential death sentence, Edgar-Jones plays all sides of Kya with ease. Taylor John Smith takes on the pivotal role of Tate, Kya's first true friend. Armed with a kind smile and earnest disposition, Smith possesses all the charms Tate should have, and his chemistry with Edgar-Jones further sells their bond. As the more complicated Chase, Dickinson does a good job in gradually exposing the kind of man his character really is. Special credit should be given to Michael Hyatt and Sterling Mercer Jr. as Mabel and Jumpin, respectively; though their roles remain as sadly underwritten as they are in the book, they bring real heart to each and every one of their scenes.

Where the Crawdads Sing will surely appease fans of the book, and on some level, its adherence to the source material is to be commended. It is very clear the filmmaking team respects and appreciates the book. However, that passion doesn't entirely hide the cracks that emerge when transferring a story from one medium to another. The production itself and Edgar-Jones do much to bring this world to brilliant life. Ultimately, though,  Where the Crawdads Sing is unable to soar like the birds Kya admires so much.

More: Watch The Where The Crawdads Sing Trailer

Where the Crawdads Sing   releases in theaters Friday, July 15. It is 125 minutes long and rated PG-13 for sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault.

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Review: The Literary Sensation Becomes a Glossy Summer Popcorn Movie

David ehrlich.

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on LinkedIn
• Show more sharing options
• Submit to Reddit
• Post to Tumblr
• Print This Page
• Share on WhatsApp

We may never know the full truth behind Delia Owens’ checkered past as a conservationist — which almost certainly seem to include a militant, white savior-minded approach to policing Zambian wildlife preserves, and may also extend to being a “co-conspirator and accessory” to murder — but the secret to the “ Where the Crawdads Sing ” author’s success is now as obvious as her plotting, even to those of us who had never heard of the runaway bestseller until Taylor Swift invented it a few short weeks ago. Olivia Newman’s (“First Match”) slick and glossy beach read of a movie adaptation brings it all right to the surface. Which is just as well, because the surface is the only layer this movie has.

Yes, this is an expertly contrived melodrama about defiance in the face of abandonment, and sure, it’s also a faintly self-exonerating caricature of a natural woman unspoiled by Western society. But underneath the story’s humid romance with Carolina marshland, and behind its Hollywood-ready façade of backwater Americana, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is really just a swampy riff on “Pygmalion,” with Eliza Doolittle reimagined as a semi-feral outsider who’s obviously the hottest girl in town, but lives in almost complete isolation until the Zack Siler of Barkley Cove teachers her how to read and make out.

Streamlined from its source material with the help of a Lucy Aliber script that embraces the frothiness of Owens’ book while turning down the temperature of its florid, nature is my real mama narration, the film version of “Where the Crawdads Sing” is a lot more fun as a hothouse page-turner than it is as a soulful tale of feminine self-sufficiency. That it’s able to split the difference between Nicholas Sparks and “Nell” with any measure of believability is a testament to Daisy Edgar-Jones ’ careful performance as Kya Clark.

The youngest daughter of an abusive drunk, and the only member of her family who stayed in their remote North Carolina house until the day Pa died sometime in the 1950s, Kya’s childhood was spent watching the people who loved her leave one-by-one (she’s played as a child by Jojo Regina). On her own from an early age, and dehumanized into folklore by the “normal” people in town — especially the kids, who label her “Marsh Girl” and laugh her right back to the swamp when she shows up at school without shoes on — Kya is forced to survive by selling mussels to the nice Black couple who run the local store (Sterling Macer, Jr. as Jumpin, and Michael Hyatt as his wife Mabel).

Some years later she’ll be hauled down to the Barkley Cove jail and forced to stand trial for the murder of a pasty cad named Chase Andrews; it’s there, at the behest of the retired lawyer ( David Strathairn !) who takes her case out of the goodness of his heart, that Kya is finally compelled to share her life story for the first time, her voiceover guiding us through the past in snippets of evocatively overwrought prose that establish her connection to nature. “Marsh is a space of light,” she coos, “where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.” In a real time is a flat circle kind of twist, it often feels like Kya taught herself to write by reading all the other novels that have been canonized by Reese Witherspoon’s book club.

Of course, self-reliant and capable as Kya is, we soon learn that she learned her letters with the help of the square-jawed soft boy who grew up down the creek. The Dawson Leery to Kya’s Joey Potter, Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith) is a kind-hearted soul who lost some family of his own, which might explain why he always remembered the orphaned girl who everyone else in Barkley Cove was eager to forget. In the summer before college, Tate starts leaving Kya supplies on a tree stump — as if he were filling a food trap for a wild animal — only to discover that the Marsh Girl has matured into a movie star. It’s a genuine credit to Newman’s handle on her film’s silly-serious tone that she allows Kya, who doesn’t have electricity or running water, to look like she’s blown all of her mussel money on Pantene Pro-V. Anyway, kissing ensues. Sometimes amid a slow-motion vortex of leaves.

But if Tate thinks the Marsh Girl will always be waiting for him (a girl can only go so far without shoes), he’s in for a rude awakening; once the word gets out that Kya is a total catch, she becomes an irresistible fetish object for the kind of fella who might have less honorable intentions. Enter our corpse-in-waiting, Mr. Chase Andrews. Played by a slithering but somewhat vulnerable Harris Dickinson , who looks so much like Taylor John Smith that his dark-haired character might as well be the blond Tate’s evil twin, Chase loves Kya like a backhanded compliment, and talks down to her even when he’s trying to get her top off. We know he won’t be around for long, but did he fall from that rickety fire tower, or was he pushed? Surely a girl like Kya, so desperate for someone who might not abandon her, wouldn’t kill the one person who hadn’t yet?

That framing device of a question looms in the background of a movie that is far less interested in how Chase dies than it is by how Kya is persecuted for it — by how the Marsh Girl has remained innocent despite a lifetime of prejudice. Shy without being sneaky, naive without seeming childlike, and in tune with nature without going full “raised by wolves” (though the jailhouse cat’s instant affinity for her is a little much), Edgar-Jones’ wide-eyed performance completely sells us on Kya’s reality as a survivor. Her soft voice and defensive posture lend the character a lilting interiority that holds this movie together across multiple timelines.

It’s a doubly impressive feat in an adaptation that’s often edited to feel like a two-hour montage, a nagging issue that leaves “Crawdads” a little off-key from its slippery first half to its inelegant coda (though only one early scene of young Kya and Tate yapping at each other from separate boats truly borders on “Bohemian Rhapsody” territory). It’s just a shame the story’s ultra-predictable ending is presented in a way that denies us the full potential of Edgar-Jones’ performance, as Newman opts for hair-raising inference over primal satisfaction.

To that same point, “Where the Crawdads Sing” works best when it embraces its own true nature as a popcorn movie. Newman seems to recognize that “and David Strathairn” are the three most beautiful words that can ever appear in the opening credits of a studio film, and she gives the actor the space he needs to stalk across a sweaty courtroom in a white suit and make us gasp along with the small crowd of people who’ve gathered to witness Kya’s trial. Dickinson textures Chase as well as the script will allow, but delights in the character’s inherent punchability so that the film’s central love triangle never loses it shape. If Jumpin and Mabel still betray the career-long criticism that Owens tends to infantilize her Black characters, Macer and Hyatt ground their roles in a quiet dignity that pushes back against how they may have been written on the page.

As a movie, “Where the Crawdads Sing” never seems worthy of the hullabaloo that continues to surround the book, but — much like its heroine — Newman’s adaptation finds just enough ways to endure.

Sony Pictures will release “Where the Crawdads Sing” in theaters on Friday, July 15.

Most Popular

You may also like.

Your browser is not supported

Sorry but it looks as if your browser is out of date. To get the best experience using our site we recommend that you upgrade or switch browsers.

Find a solution

• Skip to main content
• Skip to navigation

• Back to parent navigation item
• Digital Editions
• Screen Network
• Stars Of Tomorrow
• The Big Screen Awards
• FYC screenings
• World of Locations
• UK in focus
• Job vacancies
• Distribution
• Staff moves
• Territories
• UK & Ireland
• North America
• Asia Pacific
• Middle East & Africa
• Future Leaders
• My Screen Life
• Karlovy Vary
• San Sebastian
• Sheffield Doc/Fest
• Middle East
• Box Office Reports
• International
• Golden Globes
• European Film Awards
• Stars of Tomorrow
• Berlin jury grid

Subscribe to Screen International

• Monthly print editions
• Awards season weeklies
• Stars of Tomorrow and exclusive supplements
• Over 16 years of archived content
• More from navigation items

‘Where The Crawdads Sing’: Review

By Tim Grierson, Senior US Critic 2022-07-12T16:00:00+01:00

Daisy Edgar-Jones shines in this otherwise pulpy adaptation of the Delia Owens bestseller

Source: Sony Pictures

‘Where The Crawdads Sing’

Dir: Olivia Newman. US. 2022. 125mins

Toxic masculinity, domestic abuse and the shunning of the less-fortunate: Where The Crawdads Sing seethes with myriad social ills, but this adaptation of the Delia Owens bestseller proves to be an unconvincing, melodramatic affair that only occasionally locates the story’s mournful heart. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays a loner who’s lived away from society, only to be suspected of murder because the community considers her nothing more than a freakish recluse. A mixture of love story, courtroom drama and whodunit, the film tends toward cliche, packed with underdeveloped performances and unearned plot twists.

Daisy Edgar-Jones, superb in the 2020 miniseries  Normal People , brings a vulnerability and subtle steel to Kya

Sony will release Crawdads on July 15 in the US and July 22 in the UK, the anticipation bolstered by the book’s popularity. (Since the novel debuted in 2018, it has sold approximately 12 million copies.) Reese Witherspoon produced this adaptation after selecting the novel for her influential Book Club, and will be hoping that real-world controversies surrounding the Owens family and a murder in Zambia in the 1990s, as detailed in a recent investigative piece in ’The Atlantic’, won’t deter potential viewers. But while there’s certainly room at the multiplex for an event film that has nothing to do with superheroes or Minions, it’s more likely that it will be less-than-glowing reviews that impact theatrical prospects.

Rural North Carolina, 1969. Kya (Edgar-Jones) lives by herself in her family’s rustic house out in the marshlands, all her life being cruelly nicknamed “The Marsh Girl” by the townspeople. But when the handsome, popular Chase (Harris Dickinson) is found dead — and because they engaged in a secret romantic relationship — Kya is put on trial, the kindly retired local attorney Tom (David Strathairn) stepping in to represent her.

That trial is juxtaposed with a series of flashbacks as we see the adolescence of the now-25-year-old Kya, who survived an abusive father (Garret Dillahunt), endured poverty, received no formal education and learned to fend for herself, eventually attracting the fancy of a fellow nature-lover, Tate (Taylor John Smith). However, Kya and Tate are soon split apart due to complicated circumstances, leading to her tentative courtship with the cockier Chase.

Director Olivia Newman ( First Match ) works with cinematographer Polly Morgan to capture the beauty of the landscape, suggesting an earthly paradise in which Kya can escape from the world. ( Crawdads was shot outside of New Orleans.) But it’s a paradise that’s constantly threatened, either by her violent father in flashback or by society Kya goes to trial in 1969, facing the possibility of the death penalty if she’s found guilty. 

Edgar-Jones, superb in the 2020 miniseries Normal People , brings a vulnerability and subtle steel to Kya, who is used to being shunned, although that public scorn has done nothing to crush her spirits or dampen her artistic flowering. The character ends up being too much of a construct — a milder variation of the feral wild child cut off from the so-called civilised world — but Edgar-Jones does her best to illuminate Kya’s buried trauma and resilient decency.

Unfortunately, neither of the men in her orbit are especially riveting romantic options. Smith plays Tate with a winning wholesomeness, but his rapport with Edgar-Jones lacks electricity. As a result, the characters’ love affair is a little too chaste, which is meant to contrast later with Chase’s bad-boy demeanour, resulting in a fractious relationship that draws uncomfortable comparisons for Kya to the way her father treated her mother. Dickinson exuded melancholy soulfulness as the dim, hunky model in the Palme d’Or-winning Triangle Of Sadness , but in Crawdads he’s trapped in a far more one-dimensional role as an entitled, snide jock. 

Newman fails to enliven familiar scenes of courtroom intrigue — spectators react with predictably overheated shock to each surprising bit of testimony — and as the flashbacks begin to hint at what happened to Chase, Crawdads builds to an unsubtle condemnation of a close-minded patriarchy that literally and figuratively puts a woman like Kya on trial.

To be sure, the film has valid points to raise about sexual assault and society’s refusal to believe women, but the story’s page-turning pulpiness comes across as shallow and sensational rather than thoughtful or emotionally charged. As for Crawdads ’ final reveal, in a more compelling picture such a twist would have forced the audience to question how we perceive “victims” and “survivors.” Instead, it merely feels glib, an artificial way to hit viewers with one last narrative wallop. 

Production company: Hello Sunshine

Worldwide distribution: Sony Pictures

Producers: Reese Witherspoon, Lauren Neustadter

Screenplay: Lucy Alibar, based upon the novel by Delia Owens

Cinematography: Polly Morgan

Production design: Sue Chan

Editing: Alan Edward Bell

Music: Mychael Danna

Main cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., Jojo Regina, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna O’Reilly, David Strathairn

• United States

Related articles

‘The Landscape And The Fury’: Visions du Reel Review

2024-04-19T20:00:00Z By Allan Hunter

The fragility of life in the Bosnia and Herzegovina borderlands is challenged by the arrival of refugees in this immersive Visions du Reel winner

‘Rising Up At Night’: Visions du Reel Review

2024-04-19T20:00:00Z By Wendy Ide

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the residents of Kinshasa fight to restore electricity to their beleaguered city

Sony Classics sets 25th anniversary re-release of German thriller ‘Run Lola Run’

2024-04-19T16:12:00Z By Jeremy Kay

Tom Tykwer’s German thriller was a breakout for the director and his star star Franka Potente.

More from Reviews

‘Abigail’: Review

2024-04-18T09:10:00Z By Tim Grierson Senior US Critic

Kidnappers bite off more than they can chew in this vampire horror starring Melissa Barrera and Dan Stevens

‘Billy’: Visions du Reel Review

2024-04-17T20:17:00Z By Allan Hunter

Lawrence Cote-Collins tracks her friend Billy’s conviction for murder and his lifelong struggle with mental health

‘My Memory Is Full Of Ghosts’: Visions du Reel Review

2024-04-16T20:00:00Z By Amber Wilkinson

Syrian residents of Homs tentatively return to the war-ravaged city in the hopes of rebuilding their lives

• Advertise with Screen
• A - Z of Subjects
• Connect with us on Facebook
• Connect with us on Twitter
• Connect with us on Linked in
• Connect with us on YouTube
• Connect with us on Instagram>

Screen International is the essential resource for the international film industry. Subscribe now for monthly editions, awards season weeklies, access to the Screen International archive and supplements including Stars of Tomorrow and World of Locations.

• Screen Awards
• Media Production & Technology Show
• Terms and conditions
• Privacy & Cookie Policy
• Copyright © 2023 Media Business Insight Limited
• Subscription FAQs

Site powered by Webvision Cloud

'Where the Crawdads Sing' on Netflix: The biggest changes between the book and movie

Spoiler alert! The following post details important plot points and the ending of "Where the Crawdads Sing" (the book and the movie). Stop reading now if you don't want to know. 

New swamp, same Marsh Girl. 

After four years and more than 12 million copies sold worldwide, Delia Owens' 2018 thriller "Where the Crawdads Sing" is finally a movie. The romantic drama ( now streaming on Netflix ) is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon , whose Hello Sunshine book club helped fuel the success of the novel , which has spent more than 200 weeks on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list , including 16 weeks at No. 1.

How many have you read?  USA TODAY's best-selling books of the last 10 summers

Beginning in 1952 and spanning multiple decades, the film follows a reclusive woman named Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who was forced to raise herself when her family abandoned her as a young girl. Living alone in a shack on the coast of North Carolina, Kya falls for the gentle Tate (Taylor John Smith) and two-timing Chase (Harris Dickinson), whose love triangle soon turns fatal. 

Check out: USA TODAY's weekly Best-selling Booklist

When Chase is found dead in a swamp one day, the derisive townsfolk – who call Kya "Marsh Girl" – immediately pin her as a lead suspect, and the movie proceeds to cut between Kya's courtroom trial and flashbacks leading up to Chase's murder. 

Despite largely negative reviews for the film ( 35% positive on aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes ), fans of Owens' book may be relieved to learn that the movie adaptation is mostly faithful to its source material. Here are five of the biggest changes from page to screen: 

What to watch this weekend: 'The Gray Man,' 'Paws of Fury,'  more

1. Kya's parents are given less depth in the 'Crawdads' film

The roles of Kya's embattled Ma (Ahna O'Reilly) and angry, alcoholic Pa (Garret Dillahunt) are majorly downsized for the movie. The book gives them a sympathetic backstory: explaining how they overcame social and economic odds to get hitched during the Great Depression, only to be torn apart by Pa's heavy drinking and gambling once they started a family. Fed up with his abuse, Kya's mom and siblings all leave home one by one, until Kya is the only person left with Pa. He slowly reveals a softer side of himself: teaching Kya to fish and calling her "hon." 

Almost all of that is cut for the film, which relegates young Kya (Jojo Regina) and her parents to just a few short scenes. 

2. Kya is more proactive about getting published in the movie

In the film's first half, Kya and Tate gradually fall in love as he teaches her to read and write. On the side, Kya makes detailed sketches of plants, animals and shells, which Tate believes are good enough to sell. So he gives her a list of publishers that produce wildlife reference books, one of whom Kya meets with in person to sign a deal and negotiate an advance payment. 

But in the book, Kya doesn't become an author until much later and Tate does more of the groundwork. Years after Tate goes to college and abruptly disappears from Kya's life, he shows up at her marshland home to apologize, explaining that he never thought she'd be able to live with him in the outside world. 

He comes inside to look at her drawings and volunteers to mail her work to publishers, as both a peace offering and a way to stay in touch with Kya. She eventually lands a contract through the mail and gets her first book published two years later. 

3. Chase's engagement revelation is more shocking on screen 

After Tate ghosts her when he leaves for college, Kya accepts that she may never see or hear from him again. She warily starts to date Chase, who's ashamed of being seen around town with "the Marsh Girl" and keeps their relationship a secret. 

Kya learns to live with the arrangement – that is until she discovers that Chase is engaged. In the movie, Kya bumps into Chase and a group of his friends while grocery shopping. One of them, Pearl (Caroline Cole), introduces herself as Chase's fiancée to a stunned Kya. The reveal is slightly less dramatic in the book, where Kya happens on their wedding announcement one day in the local newspaper. 

4. Kya's reconciliation with Tate is less rushed in the book 

After telling Kya that Chase isn't good enough for her, Tate mostly disappears from the movie until the very end, when Kya is found not guilty of murder for lack of concrete evidence. Kya says in a voiceover that Tate is the only man she's ever really loved, and proceeds to boat out to the marsh, where she finds Tate fishing and kisses him. 

In the novel, there are more scenes of Kya and Tate rekindling their relationship. She hand-delivers her first book to him when it publishes and he visits her in jail during her trial. After she's acquitted, Tate finds a feather on his boat that Kya left for him. He drives over to her house to confess his love and promise that he'll never leave her again, and they happily grow old together in the book's final chapter.  

5. Amanda Hamilton gets nixed for the film 

Throughout the novel, Kya recites a variety of poems by her favorite writer, Amanda Hamilton, who is relatively unknown. Decades later, after Kya dies, Tate goes through her journals and discovers that Amanda was actually a pen name for Kya, who also wrote a poem ostensibly admitting to Chase's murder. 

Kya's pseudonym is completely absent from the movie. Instead, Tate discovers sketches of Chase in Kya's old notebooks, along with a shell taped to the back page. When they first started dating, Kya gifted Chase a shell necklace, which mysteriously went missing when he was murdered. Tate realizes the shell in Kya's notebook is Chase's, and like in the book, throws the shell into the water to hide the evidence before the film fades to black. 

• Australia edition
• International edition
• Europe edition

Where the Crawdads Sing review – hit novel crashes on the big screen

The Reese Witherspoon-produced adaptation of the best-seller remains faithful to the fantasies of the book, for better and mostly for worse

W here The Crawdads Sing, the bestselling book of 2019, presents a fantasy of grit and purity: a young white girl, abandoned by her family in the 1950s, learns to fend for herself in a North Carolina marsh, goes from illiterate to acclaimed scientific author without ever abandoning her communion with the land, and finds love as an outcast so suspicious the town assumes she killed her former lover. The debut novel by Delia Owens, a former scientist in her mid-70s known for years of controversial (and possibly violent) conservation work in Africa , offered a seductive blend of romance, murder mystery and feral coming-of-age that, along with a nod from Reese Witherspoon’s book club, helped sell over 12m copies to date.

The Witherspoon-produced film version, directed by Olivia Newman from a script by Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild), faithfully preserves that fantasy for the big screen. Which is to say, a lot of this gutless, often silly, film’s issues are the book’s, beautifully realized and thus reified by trying to make what is essentially a mud-splattered, civil rights-era fairy tale into a lifelike story.

The film, like the book, proceeds on two timelines, the latter being a swampy mystery in 1969: who, if anyone, killed Chase Anderson, the (relatively) rich kid of Barkley Cove, North Carolina, found dead at the base of an old fire tower. Small-town gossip points to “the Marsh Girl”, 24-year-old Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a mysterious object of confusion and scorn who lives alone out in the dense, mostly uninhabited wetlands. Arrested and awaiting trial, a kindly lawyer (David Strathairn), sympathetic to her isolation, draws out Kya’s tale of growing up in the wild, like a folkloric wolf-child.

As a six or seven-year-old, young Kya (Jojo Regina) is abandoned by her mother (Ahna O’Reilly) and older siblings in quick succession – we’re given only a few minutes in an idyllic flashback to know them, so it’s difficult to care about who they are or sympathize with why they left the youngest child alone with an alcoholic, physically abusive father (a menacing Garrett Dillahunt). Skittish, reasonably skeptical of people, and most comfortable alone in the marsh, Kya only lasts a day in school; the other kids tease her as a swamp rat. The film’s portrayal of her poverty is more aesthetic than acute, lest it be actually uncomfortable to watch or she become less sympathetic. Kya is covered in dirt as a child but never remarked upon as smelly, barefoot in an untamed way. We never see her truly starving, and the “shack” in which she lives bears the hallmarks of a genteel existence – books, sofa and pillows, an old radio, boxes of her mother’s fine dresses.

As a lissome, isolated teenager played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, Kya finds connection (and supplies) through Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer, Jr), a general store owner, and his wife Mabel (Michael Hyatt) – kindly black folks who, true to the novel’s sentimentalist roots, do little more than be concerned and kindly to a fellow outsider. With the help of handsome childhood friend Tate (Taylor John Smith), Kya learns to read, to translate her love of the marsh into scientific language, and in the film’s strongest section, to fall in love.

Yet at almost every turn, she is betrayed: by Tate, when he leaves for college without saying goodbye; years later by Chase, when his talk of love and marriage culminates in one disappointing (and accurately rendered) night at a motel and devolves into horrific violation. By the townspeople of Barkley Cove, who are so reluctant to see the intelligent, sensitive young woman beneath the Marsh Girl myth that they suspect her of murder. The final quarter of the two-hour film depicts her brisk, ludicrously simple trial, which only underscores Kya’s pristine innocence and her lifelong commitment to the marsh.

That marsh, filmed in coastal Louisiana, is indeed beautiful – cinematography by Polly Morgan captures vivid sunsets, gliding herons, a maze of waterways transparently worthy of devotion and care. So, too, is Normal People’s Edgar-Jones, who has found somewhat of a niche in supposedly off-putting characters that become, in her hands, doe-like, fragile and magnetic. With her searching, pooled brown eyes, Edgar-Jones can capably play a shy young woman of few words. She breathes life into Kya, particularly in intimate scenes, but struggles to ground the character’s (admittedly confusing) ruggedness; it never makes sense that the town’s No 1 outcast is a thin, conventionally beautiful, quiet and polite white woman.

A braver film would have aimed for actual grit more than the allusion to it, looked to the scabbier (and thus interesting) parts of Kya’s personality, captured a fundamental awkwardness to life outside of human interaction along with an idealized naiveté. Most of all, drawn out darker aspects of Kya’s story that could justify an implausible twist ending that undercuts almost everything that comes before, if you think about it for more than two seconds (this is also a book problem). But Where the Crawdads Sing never really had an interest in complications, or hardship, or racism as anything beyond wallpaper for its central nature girl fantasy of self-reliance. It would rather stay above the fray, gliding prettily along the marsh without actually getting dirty.

Where the Crawdads Sing is out in US cinemas on 15 July and in the UK on 22 July

• Drama films
• Reese Witherspoon
• Romance books
• Romance films

Most viewed

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘where the crawdads sing’ movie team on changes from book to the big screen and final twist.

Writer Lucy Alibar and director Olivia Newman talk to The Hollywood Reporter about how they tweaked elements of Delia Owens' best-selling novel, as stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Taylor John Smith break down the motivations behind their characters' behavior.

By Hilary Lewis

Hilary Lewis

Deputy Editor, East Coast, THR.com

• Share this article on Facebook
• Share this article on Twitter
• Share this article on Flipboard
• Share this article on Email
• Show additional share options
• Share this article on Linkedin
• Share this article on Pinit
• Share this article on Reddit
• Share this article on Tumblr
• Share this article on Whatsapp
• Share this article on Print
• Share this article on Comment

[This story contains spoilers from Where the Crawdads Sing , both the book and movie.]

With Sony’s film adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing , writer Lucy Alibar and director Olivia Newman faced the challenge of turning Delia Owens’ nearly 400-page best-selling novel into a two-hour movie that would connect with audiences.

Related Stories

Events of the week: 'challengers,' 'abigail' and more, larry david hates when people call 'curb your enthusiasm' cringe comedy: "i want to wring their necks".

The film, like the book, tells a coming-of-age story about an abandoned girl growing up in the North Carolina marsh as she learns to fend for herself and experiences love and heartbreak. That tale is coupled with a mystery as the young woman, Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ), becomes the prime suspect in the murder of local golden boy Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson).

While the overall story on the big screen remains the same as the one on the page, there are small tweaks for cinematic purposes. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the Where the Crawdads Sing premiere in New York earlier this month, Newman and Alibar opened up about the thinking behind some of those changes.

Kya’s arrest and trial for Chase’s murder takes place earlier in the film than it does in the book, with Kya captured by authorities just a few minutes into the movie. The trial and Kya and other people’s recollections take viewers back into the past. In the book, however, Kya’s not arrested until roughly halfway through the story.

Alibar said that change was merely due to time: “We couldn’t have a four-hour movie.” She added, “There just wasn’t enough time. We worked as hard we could to make it work.”

As in the book, the movie features a surprise twist at the end. But the film omits some of what’s discovered.

In the book, after Kya dies, her lifelong love Tate discovers the seashell necklace Kya gave Chase and a poem she wrote, albeit under a pseudonym, that indicates she was the one who killed Chase.

When asked why they didn’t show more of the twist and clues around Chase’s murder, Newman said, “I think Kya is a real enigma, and there is something very mysterious about her and so we wanted to maintain that mystery throughout the movie.”

Alibar added of the ambiguity around the ending, “We wanted to keep it a little more ambiguous honestly because I think life is a little more ambiguous. I think we live in a world now where we become accustomed to a kind of one-tweet answer for so many things and everybody is more complicated than that. Everything is more complicated than that. The world’s more complicated than that.”

As for why Tate keeps Kya’s secret, Smith said, “I think we’re all human. We all make mistakes. … Sometimes mistakes are a little more permanent than others and I think Tate realizes his mistake and he came back to right it. With his relationship with Kya, he spends the rest of his life trying to make it right.”

Alibar said that in writing the screenplay, she also sought to give some of the novel’s “more tertiary characters a life of their own, really letting them live and breathe so that the movie feels as populated as the book does.”

In realizing her portrayal of Kya’s mother, Ahna O’Reilly said she spoke with Newman about the “layers” of her character, revealing that she was “newly” pregnant for the first time while making the movie.

To illustrate Kya’s mannerisms and physicality of isolation, Edgar-Jones said Kya’s accent helped her capture the character’s “gentle quality.”

“There was naturally something quite lyrical about that accent so I think nailing that helped me a bit with that physicality and that kind of shy quality,” Edgar-Jones said.

While Tate and Kya initially have some awkward interactions, they quickly bond as he teaches her to read.

When asked about why Tate is drawn to Kya when so much of the town has shunned the “marsh girl,” as she’s derisively nicknamed, Smith pointed to their shared love of the marsh, biology and nature and the fact that they each “experienced abandonment.”

“Kya’s was chosen, with her family leaving her, and Tate lost his mom and his sister in a car crash,” Smith said. “So there’s a mutual understanding there but also that love for biology and nature turns into something more when Tate teaches her how to read and how to write and opens up this whole new world for her. I think they’re like kindred spirits that are meant to be.”

Still Tate breaks Kya’s heart when he fails to return to see her after he goes off to college, and Smith says that was a misguided mistake.

It’s the relationship between Kya and Tate, which runs from their childhood to old age, that producer Reese Witherspoon said is partly why the film deserved a theatrical release.

“It’s one of those movies that has a classic cinematic look. And it’s also escapism,” Witherspoon told THR . “It’s a beautiful romance, beautifully told, perfect for summer. It has that idea that love truly conquers all and a woman can truly save herself.”

Though the film is primarily set decades ago, Newman said that its portrayal of a strong female character in Kya makes it resonant for today.

“It’s about women who are underestimated and overlooked or misjudged,” she said. “The film is set during a time in which women who were victims of domestic violence didn’t have much recourse. So I think this idea of women having to save themselves is unfortunately something that resonates today.”

Alibar also highlights how Tate supports Kya in her career.

“I think there is always a great time for a movie about strong women owning themselves, owning their lives and men really supporting that and loving them,” she said. “One of the things that I love so much about this movie and so much about what Taylor John Smith brought to it is he supports Kya being a scientist and being an artist. That’s exactly who he is at a time when most people would discourage a woman from doing that. That’s what I think makes it such an exciting love story for today.”

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Kevin bacon returns to high school where ‘footloose’ was filmed after student campaign, zendaya on what serena williams told her after watching ‘challengers’ performance, original ‘blair witch’ cast asks lionsgate for retroactive residuals and consultation on future projects, cillian murphy, ‘kin’ season 2 among irish film & television awards winners, box office: ‘civil war’ drawing blood in battle with new vampire pic ‘abigail’ for no. 1, debi mazar says she regrets turning down ‘the wedding singer’ role: “made a stupid decision”.

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’: ‘Blue Lagoon’ meets ‘Murder, She Wrote’

Southern-fried whodunit/romance is based on delia owens’s 2018 best-selling novel.

“I don’t know if there’s a dark side to nature,” says the budding-conservationist protagonist of “Where the Crawdads Sing.” “Just inventive ways to endure.”

That’s how Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones) sums up her views on the animal kingdom — and humanity — in this lyrical coming-of-age story (which also doubles as a murder mystery). First-time director Olivia Newman, adapting Delia Owens’s 2018 bestseller, paints a lush picture of Southern marshland, using large brushstrokes that sometimes recall a Nicholas Sparks melodrama. Yet underneath all the natural beauty lurks something dark indeed.

The film begins in 1969, with Louisiana filling in for the fictional coastal town of Barkley Cove, N.C. Police are investigating the death of a young man named Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson) — the prime suspect being Kya, a recluse who has spent much of her young life living alone in the woods. Most townspeople call her “Marsh Girl” and know she had been romantically involved with Chase. They assume the worst of someone they’ve long thought of as a wild child. Fortunately for Kya, gentleman lawyer Tom Milton (David Strathairn) comes out of retirement to defend her.

As Kya tells her story to Tom, the “Crawdads” timeline shifts from the murder investigation to flashbacks of Kya’s troubled childhood. When she was little, Kya (Jojo Regina) stood by as her mother and, eventually, all her siblings ran away from home to escape their drunken, abusive father (Garret Dillahunt). The film’s title is taken from the advice of Kya’s big brother, Cody, who, as he leaves home, tells his 9-year-old sister where to hide when Pa comes looking for a punching bag.

In time, even Pa leaves. Yet there are people looking out for Kya. People like Jumpin’ and Mabel (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt), who run the local supply store, and, most crucially, people like Tate (Taylor John Smith), who befriends her, teaches her how to read and write, and gradually falls in love with her. “I didn’t know words could hold so much,” she tells him, before he, too, abandons her.

“Marsh is not swamp,” Kya narrates as the film begins. “Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.” But as much as “Crawdads” seems to rhapsodize about nature, this is a violent paradise that at times suggests a young adult drama directed by Werner Herzog. (Yes, that Werner Herzog.)

London-born Edgar-Jones (“Cold Feet”) convincingly portrays Kya’s haunted shyness, though she doesn’t really look like somebody you or I would shun: Even though she’s raised herself in the woods, her pastoral wardrobe is less feral child than, say, Anthropologie’s summer collection. As Kya’s contrasting young beaus, Dickinson and Smith look pretty much interchangeable, but each actor aptly conveys his respective role: brutal jock in the case of Chase, and sensitive scholar for Tate. With Strathairn’s gentle gravitas suggesting an elderly Atticus Finch, much of “Crawdads” seems like a misty-eyed look at an innocent American past. Not to spoil things, but that’s not exactly what plays out.

Screenwriter Lucy Alibar (“ Beasts of the Southern Wild ”) adapts the source material with a nod to the magic realism that characterized her Oscar-nominated screenplay for that 2012 drama, co-written with director Benh Zeitlin. But although set in a similarly rural environment and, like “Beasts,” revolving around a father and daughter, “Crawdads” is much more conventional, its tone shifting from young love to a small-town crime story. It’s Southern-fried “The Blue Lagoon” meets “Murder, She Wrote” — and topped off with a sprinkling of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

But there’s a more curious resonance with Owens’s own personal life. According to a recent Atlantic article, the “Crawdads” author is wanted for questioning in Zambia in connection with the 1995 killing of an alleged poacher — whose execution was captured on videotape and, the article suggests, may have been carried out by a member of Owens’s family. (There is no statute of limitations on murder in Zambia.)

One might wonder whether the fictional narrative of the beleaguered waif in a judgmental small town is Owens’s way of addressing something in her own past. If there’s an impulse to see Kya as a somewhat Edenic figure, don’t be so quick to judge.

As Taylor Swift sings in “Carolina,” the film’s closing song — which, in its lyrics about “creeks runnin’ through my veins,” bridges pop music with Americana — there’s also an ominous warning: “Muddy these webs we weave.”

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains sexual material and some violence, including a sexual assault. 125 minutes.

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

Where the Crawdads Sing Eats Itself into Nothingness

In a perfect vacuum, you probably wouldn’t guess that Where the Crawdads Sing is based on a runaway publishing phenomenon, a book that has sold more than 12 million copies in just a few years. One doesn’t have to have loved Delia Owens’s debut novel to see why it has appealed to countless readers. Part murder mystery, part swoony romance, part cornpone coming-of-age tale, it’s an atmospheric and gleefully overheated melodrama, the kind of book that might make you tear up even as you curse its (many, many) shortcomings. The movie is resolutely faithful to the incidents of the novel, but it doesn’t seem particularly interested in standing on its own, in being a movie . It feels like an illustration more than an adaptation.

The story of Kya Clark, a young girl abandoned by her destitute family and forced to survive on her own in a remote corner of the North Carolina wilderness, the film starts off (much like the book) with a murder investigation and then flashes back to her life. The body of a man, Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), has been found in the woods, and suspicion has settled on Kya (played as an adult by Daisy Edgar-Jones), a loner known to much of the town as “the Marsh Girl.” Taking up the case is a kindly local retired lawyer (played by a much-needed David Strathairn), who believes that Kya has been accused not because of any actual evidence against her, but because she’s been an outcast all her life, ridiculed and hated for years by the townsfolk as some kind of crazy, uncivilized brute.

As we go through Kya’s earlier years, we see a childhood defined by solitude — her mother and her siblings all leave their abusive father one by one, and dad himself (Garret Dillahunt) eventually disappears, leaving Kya alone in the family’s run-down shack on the edge of the marsh. As she grows up, Kya is romanced by a couple of blandly handsome two by fours — nerdy-nice Tate (played by Taylor John Smith as a grown-up) who shares her obsession with nature but then abandons her, and then local rich-boy Chase, who seems fascinated by her but clearly has little interest in a real relationship. We’re supposed to like one and dislike the other, but both Tate and Chase are so underdeveloped that it’s initially hard to feel much of anything for either. They barely register as people. Smith does little but stare lovingly, and Dickinson (who has, to be fair, distinguished himself in previous roles) brings a dash of snotty entitlement to Chase, but not much else.

The best thing about both novel and movie is Kya herself, a submerged character who finds solace and companionship in nature, and who, never having lived anything resembling a normal life around other people, doesn’t quite know what to do with her emotions. As the young Marsh Girl, Jojo Regina is quite moving; your heart goes out to her when a character reads out the local school lunch menu as a way of enticing the impoverished Kya to attend class. It’s a tough balance, to present a child as being both feisty and vulnerable without going overboard into schmaltzy pathos, and the film handles that particular challenge fairly well. As the grown-up Kya, Edgar-Jones is perhaps best at conveying this young woman’s wounded inner life; that speaks to the actress’s talents. However, she never really feels like someone who emerged from this world, but rather one who was dropped into it; that speaks to the clunky filmmaking.

It’s kind of a shock to find the movie version of Crawdads so lacking in atmosphere, as you’d think that’d be the one thing it would nail. Not the least because that lies at the heart of the book’s appeal: Owens spends pages describing the rough, wild, primeval world in which Kya lives, and she convincingly presents the girl as a part of the natural order of this untouched world. At various points, Kya sees herself reflected in the behavior of wild turkeys, snow geese, fireflies, seagulls, and more. She calls herself a seashell and later on finds friendship in Sunday Justice, the jailhouse cat. Where the Crawdads Sing is a book that drips with atmosphere and environmental detail, which enhance our understanding of the protagonist — and help justify some of the story’s more dramatic turns. Owens is herself a retired wildlife biologist who had previously written a number of nature books before turning to fiction. It’s no surprise that her novel works best as an extension of her prior work.

By contrast, the film’s director, Olivia Newman, presents the marsh as a postcard-pretty backdrop, a mostly distant and at times surprisingly calm and orderly space. There’s little sense of wildness, of unpredictability or abandon. Readers will of course often imagine settings differently than film adaptations, but that’s not the problem here. Onscreen, the marsh just never really registers as any kind of place, and it certainly doesn’t register as a spiritual canvas for Kya’s journey. (At times, I wondered if some of the landscape shots might actually have been green-screened in.) Even the fact that Kya has spent much of her life drawing the wildlife of the region – which ultimately plays a huge role in who she becomes – doesn’t come into play until relatively late in the film. None of these would necessarily be problems if the film weren’t otherwise so faithful to the book’s narrative.

This is the challenge of literary condensation. The murder investigation and the ensuing courtroom drama are the least compelling parts of Owens’s novel, there mostly as a loose framing device to tell Kya’s life story. Indeed, she saves the bulk of the trial for the back half of the book, and then breezes by the suspense and the procedural back-and-forth, presumably because she’s not interested in all that. (Spoiler alert: She’s more interested in the twist she springs in her final pages – a twist that also has some eerie echoes of a real-life murder investigation in Zambia that Owens and her ex-husband are reportedly embroiled in, but that’s a whole other crazy story .)

That leaves the movie with a genre-friendly structure, but almost nothing to populate it with. As a result, for much of Where the Crawdads Sing , we’re left watching a not-very interesting and all-but predetermined trial, with little suspense or surprise. We don’t ever really see what the prosecution’s case is against Kya. (If you read the book, you’d have some sense of it, but even there, it’s cursory and half-baked.) It’s a classic Catch-22: The film, to stay true to its wildly popular source material, has to focus on the case, which in turn leaves the picture little room to breathe, to let the audience bask in the atmosphere of this fascinating milieu… which is at least partly why the source material was so wildly popular in the first place. So, forget the crawdads, the turkeys, the fireflies, the seashells, and the snow geese. Forget even the jailhouse cat. The movie is a snake that eats itself.

More Movie Reviews

• Zack Snyder’s Screensaver Space Opera Comes to an Uneventful End
• What If We Didn’t Know Abigail Was a Vampire Movie?
• David Dastmalchian Deserves to Be a Star
• movie review
• where the crawdads sing
• daisy edgar-jones
• harris dickinson
• olivia newman
• delia owens

Most Viewed Stories

• Is The Tortured Poets Department Really About Matty Healy?
• The Ending of Late Night With the Devil Flubs the Punch Line
• 132 Gut Reactions to Every Track on Taylor Swift’s Double Album
• Cinematrix No. 40: April 19, 2024
• RuPaul’s Drag Race Season-Finale Recap: All Hail
• The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Taylor Swift and Matty Healy’s Relationship
• A Hidden Sexual-Assault Scandal at the New York Philharmonic

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

• User Reviews

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews

• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews
• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

Where The Crawdads Sing Review

Where The Crawdads Sing

Translating a much-loved novel to the big screen is always a tricky task. With Delia Owens’ Where The Crawdads Sing , which has sold more than 12 million copies to date, the audience is big and the expectations are high. This cinematic version, produced by Reese Witherspoon ’s Hello Sunshine, unfortunately doesn’t succeed in meeting them.

Daisy Edgar-Jones , a star on the rise after her incredible performance in BBC/Hulu series Normal People and playing a gutsy final girl in horror-thriller Fresh , is plunged into a swampy, period environment here. She is Kya, a solitary young woman left to fend for herself after her mother, then siblings, then abusive father, all desert her. Shunned by the townsfolk around her, it doesn’t take long for fingers to point in her direction when a man is found dead near her home.

You never quite buy the young, thin, beautiful, white Kya as a true outsider.

This murder accusation, and the trial deciding Kya’s fate, is the framing device for the film. Ditching the more chronological approach of the book, Lucy Alibar’s screenplay reveals the crime at the very top of the runtime, flashing backwards and forwards to fill in the gaps. This might not be an uncommon way to approach this kind of story, but it does dispel a certain amount of tension from the start — and the loose, feeble attempt at courtroom drama is nowhere near gripping enough to make it a setting we’re keen to return to.

Edgar-Jones’ natural charm, steely determination and convincing, almost-feral disposition, especially early on, keep you on Kya’s side, and Harris Dickinson impresses once again as charmingly sinister former quarterback Chase Andrews. He and Kya’s toxic, sometimes violent relationship adds some edge to this otherwise quite gentle movie — and though their dynamic is contrasted nicely by the safety and warmth Kya feels with all-American shrimper’s son Tate (Taylor John Smith), the latter pairing leaves a lot to be desired in terms of chemistry.

The trouble with this version of Where The Crawdads Sing is that you never quite buy the young, thin, beautiful, white Kya as a true outsider. The girl from the novel, covered in dirt and consumed by gnawing loneliness, is sanded down and smoothed out, her every thought over-explained by incessant voiceover. That treatment seems to have been applied to every other element of the film, too — so much so, it feels like it would be more at home in the BBC’s 8pm Sunday night slot than here on the big screen. The direction and cinematography are thoroughly conventional, lacking in much flavour or wonder, save for some beautiful sunset shots of the marshes, and the score is often saccharine and overbearing. For fans of the book, there will be some satisfaction in watching these characters come to life and the plot’s twists and turns play out — but for newcomers to this story, it is, unfortunately, underwhelming.

Related Articles

Movies | 17 05 2022

Movies | 22 03 2022

Movies | 22 07 2020

STREAM MIGRATION

Available Now, Exclusively on Peacock

Speical offer.

Buy an IMAX ticket to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes to be entered for a chance to win a Wētā FX experience in New Zealand

Special offer.

Autobots, roll out! Buy one ticket for Transformers: 40th Anniversary Event on Fandango and get one ticket for free when you use code TRANSFORMERSBOGO at checkout.

Buy a ticket to Unsung Hero from April 10 - May 10 for $5 off the Inspirational Movie 5-Film Collection. Promo code expires on May 15.

Save $5 on ghostbusters 5-movie collection.

Buy a ticket to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire on Fandango and get $5 off the Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

Explaining the News to Our Kids

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

Where the crawdads sing, common sense media reviewers.

Standout performances in uneven, trauma-filled adaptation.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Explores importance of nature, self-education, and

Kya is observant, a quick learner, a dedicated nat

Two of Kya's few friends are Jumpin' and his wife,

Children hear their father beating their mother an

Two love scenes: one quick, the other a bit longer

Insult language: "marsh girl," "White trash," "rat

High school- and college-age characters drink beer

Parents need to know that Where the Crawdads Sing is a romantic mystery/drama based on Delia Owens' bestselling 2018 novel. It's set in the coastal marshes of 1950s-'60s North Carolina, where young Kya is dubbed "Marsh Girl" because she lives in near-complete isolation. As a young adult, Kya (Daisy Edgar…

Positive Messages

Explores importance of nature, self-education, and being a lifelong learner. Depicts the many reasons people need companionship and love. Also looks at the lasting impact of trauma and abandonment and the loneliness of isolation. Themes include empathy and perseverance.

Positive Role Models

Kya is observant, a quick learner, a dedicated naturalist. She's incredibly smart and talented. Tate is generous with his time and knowledge. He's smart and loves the marsh as much as Kya, but he also breaks her heart. Jumpin' and Mabel are selfless and helpful.

Diverse Representations

Two of Kya's few friends are Jumpin' and his wife, Mabel, the movie's only Black characters of note. They're kind, generous, loving to Kya. Although their involvement in Kya's life is less stereotypical than it was in the book, they can still be considered examples of the "magical Negro" cliché -- i.e., characters of color who exist solely to aid White protagonists. Kya herself is a self-educated "genius" who doesn't attend traditional school.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Children hear their father beating their mother and siblings. A woman with visible bruises leaves her family. Siblings who are similarly hurt also leave, one by one. A father slaps his young daughter. A dead body is shown a few times. Intimate-partner violence continues in the next generation when Kya's former boyfriend stalks her menacingly and commits sexual assault and attempts to rape her, calling her "his."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two love scenes: one quick, the other a bit longer. Both show men's bare chests and a woman's bare shoulders and back. Two different couples are shown flirting, holding hands, kissing. One couple is about to have sex but stop before it happens.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Insult language: "marsh girl," "White trash," "rat girl," "cooties." "Damn," "damn you," "Christ sakes," "whoring," "goddamn." A Black man is called "boy" by a younger White man.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

High school- and college-age characters drink beer. Adults drink at a restaurant. Kya's father drinks to excess and acts like he's self-medicating to treat unspecified mental illness.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Where the Crawdads Sing is a romantic mystery/drama based on Delia Owens' bestselling 2018 novel. It's set in the coastal marshes of 1950s-'60s North Carolina, where young Kya is dubbed "Marsh Girl" because she lives in near-complete isolation. As a young adult, Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ), who doesn't trust the nearby townspeople, is accused of murder. Like the book, the film deals with heavy subjects, including child abandonment, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. The language is largely insults and uses of "damn" and "goddamn"; a White man also calls a Black man "boy." Violent scenes involve disturbing acts of intimate-partner abuse, child abuse, and sexual assault. A character is alcohol dependent and has an unspecified mental health condition. Kya experiences two pivotal romantic relationships, both of which include kissing and love scenes. The movie's depiction of two Black characters, while better than the book's, still plays into the "magical Negro" cliché, in which a character of color exists only to help a White main character. Issues related to trauma and isolation are threaded throughout the story, but so are the importance of nature, conservation, and education, giving parents and teens plenty to talk about after watching. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (26)
• Kids say (35)

Based on 26 parent reviews

Excellent story but contains violence and sexual abuse

Great movie, for adults., what's the story.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING is based on the bestselling historical romantic mystery novel written by naturalist Delia Owens. Set in a fictional North Carolina coastal town, the story takes place in the 1950s and '60s. In 1952, a young Kya Clark (Jojo Regina) witnesses her abused mother hurriedly leave the family, with the rest of the children following in her footsteps. Alone with her father ( Garret Dillahunt ), who's physically abusive and alcohol-dependent, Kya grows used to being alone in the marsh where her family's cabin sits. When her father also leaves, Kya learns to fend for herself with a little help from empathetic general store owners Jumpin' (Sterling Macer Jr.) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt). As she gets older, Kya lasts literally one day at the public school before bullying kids chase the "Marsh Girl" away. Years later, local high schooler Tate Walker ( Taylor John Smith ) teaches a now teenage Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ) to read and write. After Tate leaves for college, Kya starts a relationship with popular quarterback Chase Andrews ( Harris Dickinson ), wooed by his promises of marriage and stability. When Chase is found dead in the marsh in 1969, Kya is accused of murder and defended by a local attorney ( David Strathairn ) who believes the townsfolk should feel guilty for mistreating Kya.

Is It Any Good?

The beauty of the natural setting and the central love story aren't quite enough to save this adaptation from the slippery slope of melodrama, but Edgar-Jones gives a standout performance. The genre-bending page-to-screen drama is like a classic tragic romance set in the American South, with young Kya an almost Dickensian figure. The cruelties that young Kya must endure are nearly unwatchable: Her entire family abandons her, her father slaps her, the other kids taunt her. Later, audiences will cheer as Kya grows into a young woman who observes all the fauna and flora of the marsh with joy and admiration (and as the lovely and selfless Tate takes an interest in tutoring her and clearly falls in love). But Kya's bad luck ultimately continues, and she ends up not with brilliant scientist-in-training Tate but with predatory and deceitful Chase, who's more interested in conquest than true love.

Screenwriter Lucy Alibar's adaptation makes the murder case against Kya the framing device that spawns flashbacks to the romances, tragedies, and family drama. But, unlike the book, the movie version of Where the Crawdads Sing doesn't fully explore each of those aspects of the story. The court proceedings in particular don't explore the details that make the eventual revelations pack an extra punch. What director Olivia Newman does explore is the way that darkness lurks just beneath the lush landscape. For every feather or shell that Kya collects, there's an ugly secret, a foul rumor, a moment of abuse to witness. It's no wonder Kya prefers the marsh to the town, the kindness of Jumpin' and Mabel to the scrutiny of Chase's friends. Kya, like the animals she's observed her whole life, knows when to shrink into herself as a survival mechanism. And while the movie can be overly sentimental, there are some lovely sequences, usually between Edgar-Jones and Smith. It also has notable messages about the importance of nature, love, and treating the disenfranchised with respect and dignity.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Where the Crawdads Sing . Is it necessary to the story? Do different kinds of violence impact viewers differently?

How do trauma and substance use play a role in the story? What are some character strengths that Kya and Tate display? Who do you consider a role model ?

Discuss what role the setting plays in the movie. Why is nature so important to Kya?

If you've read the book, talk about any differences between the book and movie. What do you think about aspects of the book that the movie added or changed?

How does the movie treat sex and consent? Parents, talk to your teens about sex, consent, and sexual assault.

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 15, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : September 13, 2022
• Cast : Daisy Edgar-Jones , Harris Dickinson , Taylor John Smith , Garret Dillahunt
• Director : Olivia Newman
• Inclusion Information : Female directors
• Studio : Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Book Characters , Science and Nature
• Character Strengths : Empathy , Perseverance
• Run time : 125 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault
• Last updated : April 17, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Fried Green Tomatoes

Sharp Objects

Thriller movies, drama movies that tug at the heartstrings, related topics.

• Perseverance
• Book Characters
• Science and Nature

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Where the Crawdads Sing (United States, 2022)

The screen adaptation of Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing , written by Lucy Alibar and directed by Olivia Newman, comes with a built-in audience – the novel has (to date) sold 12 million copies and, if only a fraction of those readers pays for a movie ticket, the box office intake could be impressive. Although it’s true that real-life controversies related to the author’s conservation efforts in Zambia during the 1990s have tainted Owens’ reputation, the movie is two degrees removed from any alleged criminal wrongdoing and should be allowed to stand on its own. Both Reese Witherspoon (who produced the film) and Taylor Swift (who contributed a song) share this view.

Where the Crawdads Sing (a metaphorical title since “crawdads,” a.k.a. crayfish, don’t make any noise) combines elements of an unconventional coming-of-age story with a procedural murder mystery. A portion of the story unfolds in 1969 with the murder trial of Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones), the so-called “Marsh Girl” who has been arrested in connection with the suspicious death of her ex-lover, Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). As the trial unfolds, we are treated to a lengthy series of flashbacks narrated by Kya as she relates her past to her lawyer, Tom Milton (David Strathairn).

The movie is especially effective in the way it develops the North Carolina marshlands into as vital a character as any of the humans. The composition of many of those scenes (shot by cinematographer Polly Morgan) with their light, effervescent shades and darker shadows, echoes how the movie’s dramatic tone shifts and blends. The flashback sequences detailing Kya’s tenacity and isolation are among the film’s most compelling. It’s easy to understand how someone as intelligent and perceptive as Kya could fall for the seemingly transparent manipulations of Chase when one thinks back to the tragic (but beautifully filmed) 4 th of July when hope turns to loss for her on a beach.

The court proceedings are less interesting, seeming more often than not like excerpts from a low-rent John Grisham novel. Viewers may be more interested in the resolution of the mystery than the filmmakers appear to be. It’s treated largely as an afterthought (this is faithful to the novel) and, although there is a revelation of sorts, it’s perfunctory and not terribly satisfying. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that the coming-of-age scenes are unique, the courtroom material feels less so.

I feel as if I’ve been using the term “old-fashioned” to describe the few recent movies that have focused on storytelling and character development. In a way, those qualities, which were once the hallmarks of well-received motion pictures, have become lost in a sea of special effects and spectacle-related aspects. Where the Crawdads Sing is not without flaws but it draws the viewer into its specific time and place and offers an engaging two-hour escape into the life of a memorable individual. More movies today could learn from such an “old-fashioned” approach.

Comments Add Comment

• Fight Club (1999)
• In the Company of Men (1997)
• Apollo 13 (1995)
• Cosmopolis (2012)
• Cruel Intentions (1999)
• Bad Lieutenant (1993)
• Fresh (2022)
• (There are no more better movies of Daisy Edgar-Jones)
• (There are no more worst movies of Daisy Edgar-Jones)
• Outpost, The (2020)
• (There are no more better movies of Taylor John Smith)
• Blacklight (2022)
• (There are no more worst movies of Taylor John Smith)
• See How They Run (2022)
• Triangle of Sadness (2022)
• Iron Claw, The (2023)
• Darkest Minds, The (2018)
• Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)
• King's Man, The (2021)

Netflix adds tense movie thriller with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes – but critics disagree

From the marshes to your living room

QUICK SUMMARY

Netflix is set to add a movie that audiences love but critics really didn't like. Where the Crawdads Sing arrives on May 5th. 

The great thing about people is that we're all different. It takes all kinds to make a world, and nowhere is that seen more often than with art. One man's masterpiece is another's misfire and this movie coming to Netflix at the start of next month is a prime example of that.

Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2022 release based on a bestselling book that utterly enchanted audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes , it boasts an incredible 96% from audiences but then a staggeringly low 35% from critics. Did they watch the same movie? How can there be such a wide divide between the two groups? Of course, Netflix isn't a streaming service for film critics but for regular people, which is why the movie's arrival on May 5th is a big deal. It's the perfect chance to make a decision for yourself.  

So what's it about? Well set in the 50s and 60s in the North Carolina marshes, we follow Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) as a girl abandoned by her family and faring for herself. Known to most as "Marsh Girl", the only regular contact she has with people is at the local general store where she sells Mussels. 

Unable to read, with no formal education, a teenage Kya befriends local boy Tate (a hunky Taylor John Smith) who helps teach her the basics. Of course, spending so much time together with such an intense task, feelings soon develop. But then Tate has to go to college. 

Left on her own Kya of course meets another boy, Chase (Harris Dickinson from Triangle of Sadness ). He's popular, charming and almost certainly too good to be true.  I won't go into much more but if you've seen Anatomy of a Fall there are some surprising similarities. 

Aside from Daisy Edgar-Jones, the real star of the show here is the location. The North Carolina marshes on screen are actually located in New Orleans but are absolutely stunning nonetheless. As a bit of escapism on a Sunday night, It scratches a particular itch.

But should you watch it? Well, I can't answer that for you. With such a high audience score and such a low critics score, the truth probably lies somewhere in between, best to decide for yourself. Oh but it does feature an original Taylor Swift song, so it is a must listen at least. 

Get the T3 newsletter!

All the best features, news, tips and great deals to help you live a better life through technology

Andy is T3's Tech Staff Writer, covering all things technology, including his biggest passions such as gaming, AI, phones, and basically anything cool and expensive he can get his hands on. If he had to save one possession from a fire it would be his PlayStation 5. He previously worked for Tom’s Guide - where he got paid to play with ChatGPT every day. When it comes to streaming, Andy will have his headphones glued in whilst watching something that will make him laugh. He studied Creative Writing at university, but also enjoys supporting his favourite football team (Liverpool), watching F1, teaching himself guitar, and spending time with his dog.

Released at Watches and Wonders 2024, this is haute horology on a budget

By Sam Cross Published 21 April 24

If you can afford the Netgear Orbi 970 Series, then all of your Wi-Fi needs are sorted for many years to come

By David Nield Published 21 April 24

Useful links

• When is the next Prime Day?
• Best 5G phones
• Best VPN services
• Best laptops
• Best smartphones
• Best mattresses
• Best phone deals
• Best mattress deals
• Best TV deals

The Best Romance Movies on Netflix in April 2024

A re you interested in finding an excellent romantic tale to make you believe in love again? Well, here’s a roundup of the best romance movies on Netflix that are currently available for streaming. On our list, you’ll find everything from romantic comedies to heartwarming dramas to films with a bit more spice!

Netflix has been creating more original romantic content lately, so there’s a wide variety of new releases to explore. But fear not-there are also timeless classics, award-winning picks, and blockbuster hits in the mix. So, let’s dive right in and prepare for those adorable first encounters, grand declarations of love, playful banter, sweet gestures, tender embraces, alluring seductions, and all the quintessential moments that make romance movies irresistible.

The Perfect Find

‘the perfect find’.

Rotten Tomatoes

In “The Perfect Find,” Gabrielle Union stars as Jenna Jones, a heartbroken woman in her 40s navigating life after a very public breakup and job loss. Directed by Numa Perrier and based on Tia Williams’ novel, the film follows Jenna’s journey to rebuild her career and find love. Along the way, she meets a younger man, played by Keith Powers, who challenges her perspective on life. However, things get complicated when she discovers he’s the son of her intimidating new boss.

Premiering at the Tribeca Festival in 2023, “The Perfect Find” stole the hearts of audiences and bagged the Audience Award for Narrative Feature. Critics praised the film, especially the genuine chemistry between Union and Powers. If you’re craving a feel-good romance with a dash of intrigue, “The Perfect Find” is a must-watch.

A Tourist’s Guide to Love

‘a tourist’s guide to love’.

“A Tourist’s Guide to Love” features Rachael Leigh Cook, known for “She’s All That,” and Scott Lý in the lead roles under the direction of Steven Tsuchida. The film follows Amanda Riley (Cook), as an executive who travels to Vietnam to explore the country’s tourism industry. There, she encounters Sinh Thach (Lý), a charming tour guide. The cast also includes Ben Feldman and Missi Pyle, adding humor to this adorable romantic comedy.

Written by Eirene Donohue, “A Tourist’s Guide to Love” weaves a heartwarming tale of resilience, touching on themes of heartbreak and second chances. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film’s lovable characters and catchy soundtrack are sure to grab your attention.

Love Is in the Air

‘love is in the air’.

“Love Is in the Air,” directed by Adrian Powers and written by Cara Bradshaw and Katharine McPhee, is an excellent romantic comedy filled with laughter. It follows seaplane pilot Dana Randall (Delta Goodrem), who unexpectedly finds love with her partner William (Joshua Sasse) despite his initial plans to disrupt Dana’s business. The talented cast also includes Mia Grunwald and Roy Billing.

In “Love Is in the Air,” whimsical romance takes center stage as Dana and William’s spicy chemistry lights up the screen. It’s a light-hearted story that is perfect for a cozy romantic movie night and checks all the boxes for a classic romance.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

‘eurovision song contest: the story of fire saga’.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is the perfect pick for those looking for a quirky yet heartwarming Netflix Original. Starring Rachel McAdams and Will Ferrell, this comedy follows two Icelandic singers dreaming of Eurovision glory. Directed by David Dobkin and written by Ferrell and Harper Steele, the film also features Dan Stevens, Demi Lovato, Graham Norton, and Pierce Brosnan.

Despite its comedic premise, the Eurovision Song Contest surprised fans by being one of the most romantic movies of 2020. Rachel McAdams shines, showcasing her comedic chops once again. While the film delivers plenty of laughs, the memorable original songs and the genuine tenderness make it unique. It takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions, from laughter to tears, as you root for the quirky duo to achieve their dreams and find love.

The Half Of It

‘the half of it’.

Alice Wu’s adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac introduces us to Ellie Chu, a bright but socially isolated teenager who earns money by ghostwriting love letters for her classmates. When she starts composing letters for Paul Munsky, a famous but not-so-bright athlete, to Aster Flores, the girl Ellie secretly has feelings for, an unexpected bond forms between them. With its beautiful visuals, clever dialogue, and many film references, “The Half of It” is a heartfelt coming-of-age romance that offers insights beyond its years.

13 Going on 30

’13 going on 30′.

In “13 Going on 30,” Jennifer Garner steals the show as Jenna Rink, a 13-year-old girl who magically turns 30 after a birthday disaster. It’s like a mix of “Big” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” following Jenna’s wild journey from her childhood home to a fancy NYC apartment and her dream job at a magazine. She’s stuck in an adult body but still feels like a kid inside, questioning whether growing up is as great as it’s said to be.

Garner’s performance is a complete switch-up from her usual butt-kicking roles in “Alias,” brimming with infectious energy and a childlike spark. This rom-com classic from the early 2000s is an absolute joy to watch, no matter your age.

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society

‘the guernsey literary & potato peel society’.

Historical romance fans will be smitten with the Netflix original “The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society.” Released in 2018, the film stars Lily James as a writer who forms connections with the inhabitants of Guernsey, an island that endured German occupation during World War II. In the midst of the story, the protagonist finds herself torn between two suitors: her American fiancé (Glen Powell) and a local man from Guernsey (Michiel Huisman).

Overall, it’s a captivating tale that beautifully intertwines love, resilience, and the enduring spirit of a community facing the aftermath of war.

Always Be My Maybe

‘always be my maybe’.

“Always Be My Maybe” tells the story of two childhood pals who reunite, portrayed by Ali Wong and Randall Park. Despite considering romance as teenagers, they took different paths in life. Now, she’s a successful chef while he’s still finding his way with his dad’s business and his band. As they navigate their rekindled connection, they must confront their past and present feelings, all while grappling with her fame and his insecurities.

The film is filled with quirky moments, including Keanu Reeves playing a unique version of himself as Wong’s love interest, and Wong’s fantastic wardrobe adds an extra flair.

Happiness For Beginners

‘happiness for beginners’.

“Happiness For Beginners” is based on Katherine Center’s beloved novel directed by Vicky Wight. It is a heartwarming tale about self-discovery and second chances. Ellie Kemper, known for her role in “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” stars Helen, a recent divorcee determined to reinvent herself. She joins a survivalist hike along the Appalachian Trail and hopes to escape her past and find a new identity. Along the journey, she reconnects with an old acquaintance (played by Luke Grimes), sparking a fresh outlook on life.

While critics had mixed opinions, this romantic comedy is undeniably an excellent watch for romance lovers. Kemper and Grimes share a unique electric chemistry that draws you in from the start. Moreover, we particularly loved the movie as it was refreshing to see Kemper in a role that’s different from her usual bubbly characters.

‘Greenberg’

If we were to look at Ben Stiller’s comedy journey, we’d see Zoolander and Greenberg at different ends. While Zoolander is all about fun and silliness, Greenberg is more introspective and serious, like a grown-up version of “Girls” for men.

Stiller stars as Roger Greenberg, a man in his forties recovering from a tough time and crashing at his brother’s house in Hollywood while they’re away. He’s in Los Angeles with no real plans but ends up getting caught up between his brother’s gorgeous personal assistant (Greta Gerwig), reconnecting with an old friend (Rhys Ifans), and trying to sort things out with his ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Co-written by Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Greenberg fits perfectly into Baumbach’s style as it explores the world of privileged people and their messy lives.

Your Place or Mine

‘your place or mine’.

In the directorial debut of Aline Brosh McKenna’s “Your Place or Mine,” we follow best friends Debbie Dunn (Reese Witherspoon) and Peter Coleman (Ashton Kutcher) as they switch cities to experience each other’s daily lives. While Peter cares for Debbie’s son in Los Angeles, Debbie pursues her dreams in New York. However, their relationship changes unexpectedly when Debbie falls for the charming Theo Martin (Jesse Williams). The film also features a talented supporting cast, including Zoë Chao, Tig Notaro, and Steve Zahn.

With echoes of beloved romantic comedies like “When Harry Met Sally” and “You’ve Got Mail,” this cross-country rom-com is full of heart and humor, thanks to its fantastic ensemble of comedians.

Where The Crawdads Sing

‘where the crawdads sing’.

“Where the Crawdads Sing,” based on Delia Owens’ novel, combines mystery, thriller, and genre-breaking elements into a captivating tale. The film follows Kya from her challenging childhood to adulthood as she grows up in a neglected North Carolina marshland. When a local man is found dead, Kya becomes the prime suspect in the murder. While dealing with this, she must also navigate a love triangle with the town’s golden boy, Chase, and her supportive friend, Tate.

The film’s stunning cinematography and gripping storyline make it a compelling romance with a thrilling twist that’s a must-watch for everyone who loves mystery and romance.

In the Netflix original holiday rom-com “Holidate,” Emma Roberts (known for American Horror Story) teams up with Luke Bracey (Elvis) in a charming tale directed by John Whitesell and penned by Tiffany Paulsen. The story follows Sloane Benson (Roberts), who strikes a unique deal with Jackson (Bracey) to be each other’s holiday date without any romantic strings attached. But as the festive season goes on, their initial pact crumbles and Sloane begins craving something more profound.

This spectacular movie offers all the classic ingredients of a romantic comedy, combining laughter with heartwarming moments. It explores singles’ pressures and expectations during the holiday season, and we find it highly relatable!

The Incredible Jessica James

‘the incredible jessica james’.

Jessica Williams made waves as The Daily Show’s youngest correspondent. After departing the show in 2016, she shifted her focus to the film industry, starting with her role as Executive Producer and lead actor in the rom-com The Incredible Jessica James.

In the movie, Jessica is an aspiring playwright working at a children’s theater workshop who struggles to navigate life after her recent devastating breakup. When her friend Tasha (Noël Wells) sets her up on a date with Boone (Chris O’Dowd), Jessica must weigh the possibilities of romance and decide on her future direction in her personal and professional life.

“The Incredible Jessica James” brings a fresh and contemporary take on the romantic comedy genre. It’s witty, charming, and full of unapologetically modern elements, avoiding clichés and earning praise from critics for its originality.

Someone Great

‘someone great’.

In the charming romance flick Someone Great, Gina Rodriguez plays a young woman who embarks on a whirlwind adventure with her closest friends before bidding farewell to town. The twist? She’s just been dumped by her beau of seven years. Written and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson in her debut as a director, the film also features Brittany Snow, DeWanda Wise, and Peter Vack.

Although the film is filled with humorous moments, the heart of the film lies in the genuine connection between Rodriguez and Stanfield. This leaves audiences rooting for their love story despite its inevitable end. With its blend of comedy and heartfelt moments, “Someone Great” is a must-watch for anyone craving a feel-good romantic comedy on Netflix.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

‘lady chatterley’s lover’.

If Fifty Shades of Grey and Bridgerton had a baby, it’d be Lady Chatterley’s Lover. This scandalous D.H. Lawrence novel, banned for years, gets a modern makeover in Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s adaptation, diving into female desire.

In this steamy romance, a discontented noblewoman (Emma Corrin) breaks societal norms by pursuing her desires and engaging in a secret affair with the estate’s gamekeeper (Jack O’Connell). While some critics note a lack of intense drama, they praise the film’s passionate romance, the perfect pairing of characters, and the luxurious atmosphere, complete with gorgeous costumes.

‘Set It Up’

In Claire Scanlon’s spectacular romantic comedy Set  It Up, we follow two overwhelmed assistants who hatch a plan to set up their bosses to gain some much-needed free time away from their demanding jobs. However, amidst their plotting, they unexpectedly fall for each other instead.

Penned by Katie Silberman, Set It Up received several positive reviews from critics. If you’re craving a beautiful romantic comedy but don’t want to revisit a classic for the umpteenth time, this movie is worth a watch. While the typical rom-com plot points are predictable, they are executed with finesse and effectiveness that you’ll find yourself thoroughly entertained.

Phantom Thread

‘phantom thread’.

If you’re in the mood for a darker romantic movie on Netflix, Phantom Thread might catch your interest. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a fashion designer and Vicky Krieps as a waitress who becomes his muse, the film explores their tumultuous relationship set in the 1950s. Their rocky relationship is further worsened by poisonous mushrooms that significantly add tension to the film. Overall, the intricate web of passion woven throughout the movie will surely keep viewers hooked.

Tired of going solo to weddings, two college friends, Ben and Alice, decide to accompany each other as platonic dates to all the events. Plus One, a charming comedy that won Tribeca’s Audience Award in 2019, evolves into a heartfelt story of friendship turning into love. Ben and Alice, played by Jack Quaid and Maya Erskine, portray relatable characters dealing with loneliness and societal pressures to find a partner.

Plus One stands out from typical romantic comedies by embracing human connection’s messy, fundamental aspects. It celebrates friendship, where authenticity shines even when characters are at their least glamorous.

Marriage Story

‘marriage story’.

Warning: Marriage Story will tug at your heartstrings.

Directed and written by Noah Baumbach, the film follows the journey of divorce from start to finish. Adam Driver plays the accomplished theater director’s husband, and Scarlett Johansson plays the successful actress’s wife. The excellent ensemble cast features Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray Liotta.

Highly praised and nominated for six Academy Awards, it’s not just one of the standout films 2019 — it’s among Baumbach’s finest works. What makes the film exceptional is its portrayal of the divorce from both perspectives, ensuring viewers empathize deeply with both characters. Driver and Johansson deliver outstanding performances, portraying complex, fully fleshed-out individuals. Moreover, Baumbach skillfully depicts how the couple’s voices and once-shared love are drowned out in divorce.

Heart-wrenching and profoundly human, Marriage Story is a must-watch for every romantic movie lover.

The post The Best Romance Movies on Netflix in April 2024 appeared first on Open Sky News .

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Abigail Link to Abigail
• Civil War Link to Civil War
• Arcadian Link to Arcadian

New TV Tonight

• The Jinx: Season 2
• Knuckles: Season 1
• THEM: The Scare: Season 2
• Velma: Season 2
• The Big Door Prize: Season 2
• Secrets of the Octopus: Season 1
• Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
• Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story: Season 1
• We're Here: Season 4

Most Popular TV on RT

• Fallout: Season 1
• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• The Sympathizer: Season 1
• Ripley: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• Under the Bridge: Season 1
• Sugar: Season 1
• A Gentleman in Moscow: Season 1
• Parasyte: The Grey: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Under the Bridge Link to Under the Bridge
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

All Guy Ritchie Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

All A24 Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

Renewed and Cancelled TV Shows 2024

Best Moments From The Migration Movie

• Trending on RT
• Video Game TV Ranked
• Most Anticipated Movies
• Play Movie Trivia
• MGM: 100 Years, 100 Essential Movies

Best Movies to Stream at Home (2024)