Where the Crawdads Sing is based on a book, not just any book, one of the biggest-selling books of all time. I will be honest, I had not only never read the book, I had never even heard of it! The wife and I were looking for something to go and see at the movie theater over the weekend and this sounded like a good murder/mystery kind of movie, but it ended up being way more than that.
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You can download or stream the movie from Netflix. Click on the Download button at the end of this review.
The movie starts in the ’50s is a coming-of-age story about a young girl called Kya. Kya has a pretty rough life. Kya lives in the Marshes with her family, but her mother, her siblings, and then her alcoholic abusive father all leave her. Left alone, Kya starts to learn to look after and fend for herself.
She has a real love for nature and a very creative side and she is able to trade with a lovely couple for things like money, food, and gas. Seeing her grow and eventually become romantically involved with a sweet boy called, Tate is really heartwarming stuff. However, as heartwarming as it was, I knew it was going to lead to heartbreak.
Where the Crawdads Sing is a movie of two halves. We get the first half of the movie, where we see Kya grow up and start to come into her own. It then jumps forward to the second part, and this is where the whole murder/mystery drama aspect of the movie really kicks in.
The movie moves into the 60s and at 19, Kya ends up in a “relationship” with the local football star, Chase Andrews. She thinks that Chase is all sincere and loving, but he is a mean, nasty, and just a flat-out jerk who just wants her for sex! Well, Chase ends up found dead in the swamp and the townspeople are all pointing the finger at Kya as the one who did it!
It is a pretty hard trial to watch and you are never sure what way it is going to go. One minute you think that Kya is going to be proven innocent and then the next you think she is in real trouble. I actually had no idea if she actually even killed the guy all the way until the end of the movie! It was told very well and I liked how it had a real definitive ending as I had heard that the book was not quite as clear.
A huge reason why Where the Crawdads Sing works so well is the beautiful way that it is shot by Olivia Newman. The directing and locations as well as the tremendous performance from Daisy Edgar-Jones are truly remarkable stuff and impossible not to be captivated by.
I went into this movie with no real expectations, but it ended up being one of the best movies I have seen so far this year. Where the Crawdads Sing is just such a great movie in every regard, I am struggling to think of anything that I did not like about it. Granted, I have not read the book so I cannot say how faithful it is to it, but as a movie, it really is fantastic.
