featured image by Michele K. Short
The story of When The Crawdads Sing, that now has been adapted into a film produced by the legendary Reese Witherspoon. At first glance seemed to be a fun, romantic mystery following Kya a young girl living in the North Carolina marsh, who is rejected from the town which results in judgment and allegations of a murder that involves a love triangle from her past. Audiences that had read the book have given the movie outstanding reviews, but the movie should be able to stand on its own regardless of audiences reading of the book and this movie definitely doesn’t do that.
At first glance it’s captivating plot line and trailer created a captivating anticipation for its release, but at release the movie falls short of the audience’s expectations. When The Crawdads Sing’s multi genre storyline causes the movies to not reach audiences expectations as it’s everything but nothing all at once. The movie try’s to be a mysterious, romantic and biographical story all surrounding fictional characters that are wonderfully interpreted by the actors but lacked cohesiveness as whole. The movie distracts itself, beginning with the focus of the murder which turns into a biography of Kya resulting in the romance which falls back into the murder and then the biography again, but all this in an extremely messy film that lacks cohesiveness and causes confusion among audiences.
The few factors that save this film could be, one the acting as Kya was interpreted by the 24 year old Normal People star Daisy Edge-Jones and the two love interests by Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson which aren’t as well known but still did a great job portraying their characters. And secondly, Taylor Swift single Carolina at the end of the film expands upon Swift’s albums Folklore and Evermore as it’s a similar music genre and provides fans with more musical content from her.
When The Crawdads Sing might fall short on what it’s audiences expected but it still holds a strong messaging and imagery that is carried out by its actors. Films like When The Crawdads Sing are truly sad occurrence since the overall idea wasn’t bad but the execution failed to reach it.
Sweet August Daily 