SEPTEMBER 2022:
SURVIVAL OF THE NATURALIST…
Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2022 film in the murder mystery and thriller drama genres. It is based on the 2018 novel of the same name written by Delia Owens. It was directed by Olivia Newman from a screenplay adaptation written by Lucy Alibar. The film was produced by Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter. Witherspoon produced the film through her production company, Hello Sunshine. Daisy Edgar-Jones is the star of the leading cast as Catherine “Kya” Clark, who is abandoned in her North Carolina marsh home and raises herself to an adult and then faces murder charges when the local town football star from high school ends up dead and Kya was rumored to be involved with him. While living and raising herself in the marshland, Kya becomes an expert on the land around her studying it instead of going to school. She becomes a Naturalist and writes books about the marsh that has helped raise her.
STARTING AT THE END TO GET TO THE BEGINNING…
The film opens in the year 1969 when a body has been discovered by some local Barkley Cove boys while riding their bikes out by the fire tower and the local sheriff, Sheriff Jackson is called. The sheriff and his deputy, Joe Purdue, cannot determine if he fell from the tower or if he was thrown from the tower due to a lack of evidence on the crime scene, but they are able to determine that the deceased body is that of a local football hero, Chase Andrews.
GONNA GO BACK IN TIME…
The film fades back to the year 1953 when Catherine “Kya” Clark lives in a shack with her poor family in a North Carolina marsh shack home. Kya’s mother and older siblings flee one by one as their alcoholic and abusive father gambles their money away and hits their mother and the children one too many times. Kya is left alone with him until he finally abandons her too at the age of seven. Kya learns to survive by selling the mussels she harvests early in the morning at the Barkley Cove local store. The townspeople refer to her as the “Marsh Girl”. James “Jumpin” Madison and his wife Mabel Madison run the Barkley Cove local store and unofficially look after Kya from afar after she is abandoned by making sure she has things like clothes and shoes, while also teaching her how to grow her own food on the marsh by providing her with the seeds to plant.
WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR…
As the years go by, her slightly older friend Tate Walker lends her books and teaches her to read, write, and count. They begin to bond over their love of nature and it develops into a romantic relationship. The relationship is ended when Tate leaves for college and breaks his promise to return to Kya on the 4th of July. Four or so years pass and it’s now 1968.
THE SHELL AND THE QUARTERBACK…
Kya begins a relationship with Chase Andrews. At first, she is reluctant to be with him not only due to fear of being abandoned once again, but she fears that his intentions aren’t honorable, and he tries to reassure her they are and promises to wait for her to be ready before getting intimate with her but promises her marriage in the process to reassure her he is not going anywhere. Chase gives Kya a shell he finds in the water alongside them, and she turns it into a necklace and gives it to him on the same night that she feels comfortable being with a man intimately for the first time ever in her life. The relationship continues with Kya questioning why she hasn’t met his family and why they only ever meet in the marsh.
THE HEART OF A SNAKE…
Andrews insists that he knows Kya is not comfortable in town with the people of Barkley Cove and he also explains that his parents aren’t as approving of his relationship with her but that he loves her anyway and it changes nothing about their future. But when Kya heads to town to get some supplies and groceries she sees Chase in town with some of his friends and a girl who wears an engagement ring and introduces herself to Kya as Chase’s fiancé. Kya immediately gets out of there and heads back to the marsh and breaks down upset and crying knowing she was lied to by Andrews, and she ends the relationship without even telling him. She then hears a boat pulling up and assumes it is Chase coming to make excuses, so she hides while trying to see who it is, only it’s not Andrews. It’s Tate Walker who has returned to town and wants to talk to Kya about wanting to rekindle the romance he left behind.
TO FORGIVE AND NEVER FORGET…
Kya is unsure about letting Tate into her life again but listens to him when he tries to explain why he broke his promise and never returned to her. He explains it all to her and says that despite trying to stay away he kept coming back to his feelings for her and realized that he loves her and wants to be with her for the rest of his life. That his degree and great job don’t matter if he can’t be with her, and he would give it all up just to have another chance to be with her. Kya tells Tate she needs time to think it all over and decide what to do. She does thank Tate for the publishing list of people she should call about her nature drawings and writings. They decided to publish her work immediately and the income helps her keep her home in the marsh and secure a deed to the land.
REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD…
It is through her published books that Kya is reunited with her older brother Jodie who saw one of her books in a store and returns to North Carolina to see her while on leave from the military. He explains that their mother died before being reunited with her children, that he’s not sure about the whereabouts of their other siblings but that he promised to visit as much as the military allowed him to. Kya hopes for the next time she sees her brother and passes each day preparing more drawings and writings for another marsh book and begins to make her shack more of a home now that she has the income to maintain it.
NO STILL MEANS NO…
While Kya is once again in town gathering what she needs she runs into Chase often and resists his every attempt to be let back into her life. She consistently tells him no and asks to be left alone. He eventually cannot take no for an answer and corners her out by the marsh and tries to rape Kya, where she successfully gets him off her and vows that he if comes near her again she will kill him. This threat is overheard by a nearby fisherman who cannot see what took place prior to her threat. After she hides out away from her home, she returns to it to find that Chase returned and vandalized her home while she was hiding in the bushes.
ALL CAUGHT UP…
The beginning of the film is now the present time in the story, and we find out days later after this altercation that Chase Andrews is found dead at the bottom of the fire tower. What is missing is the shell necklace given to Chase by Kya, which he wore every day after. So, since the muddy bog floods at at the fire tower had destroyed any tracks of the killer and no fingerprints were found at the tower, the police have little to no evidence. All they do find is a red fiber on Andrews’s body and link it to the red hat the sheriff removed illegally from Kya’s home. They trace the fiber to the hat and arrest Kya and charge her with first-degree murder and is ordered to trial in a town where she is prejudiced by the townspeople.
A TRIAL OF PREJUDICE…
A Barkley Cove resident his whole life, and local lawyer, Tom Milton steps up to defend Kya in her murder trial. At first, she is not receptive to him but then she opens up and talks to him and tells the story of her relationship with Andrews leading up to the night he died. She explains that she had an alibi for the night he died due to a trip she took to meet with her book publisher in Greenville. Even though Kya explained this to the police they stick to an unfounded theory that Kya took the bus back to Barkley Cove in the middle of the night disguised and killed Chase Andrews and then took the last bus out of Barkley Cove back to Greenville to have a solid alibi. So, the prosecutor speculates during her trial to try and prove it with only the theory, the missing necklace, and the fisherman’s testimony to convince the jury. Tom Milton argues the best defense based on the prejudice of the town up against the actual evidence and the jury finds Kya not guilty of murder in her 1969 trial.
TIME FLYS LIKE A SEAGULL IN THE MARSH…
Time passes in the film, and you see Kya and Tate end up together, Jodie has a family of his own that includes Kya and Tate. Kya also loses the closest father she had when Jumpin dies, and we see Kya at his funeral. Some more time passes, and we get to see that Tate and Kya spent the rest of their lives together. Kya publishes more illustrated marsh and nature books and while she is boating in her swamp in her 70s, she imagines she sees her mother returning home. Tate then finds Kya dead in the boat at their dock. While Tate is boxing up Kya’s things, he finds a drawing of Chase in one of Kya’s journals with accompanying statements implying that it was necessary to kill Chase. He also finds the missing shell necklace that he was wearing the night he died. It was hidden in the back of the journal; Tate removes the shell necklace from the journal. He walks out to the beach in the marsh, removes the string of the necklace, and places the shell into the water where it is taken away with the next wave. Having done so, Tate has chosen to keep Kya’s secret for the rest of his life.
TO READ OR NOT TO READ…
With films like this that are based on a novel, it is always great to read the novel because the film is always leaving events out or changing some of what is written to follow the story they are telling on screen. It is the same in the case of, Where the Crawdads Sing, you should read the book before watching the film, in my opinion. The 2018 novel is so much more detailed about Kya, her life, and what she is thinking while growing up alone in the marsh. It is also more detailed with the events, including Kya’s trial. The book has more witnesses testify in court than in the film, and there is more detail as to who brings the sheriff’s office case information as they are gathering evidence to try and charge Kya. I thought the film was good regardless of having read the novel first. I thought they did a pretty good job of retaining as much as they could from the novel without turning it into a longer film.
WHERE DO CRAWDADS SING?
Some of you may have read the book or watched the film and thought about where crawdads sing. The truth is that crawdads, or crayfish, do not actually sing. In the novel and the film, the saying comes from when Kya’s mother would encourage her to explore the marsh, she would say, “Go as far as you can-way out yonder where the crawdads sing.” And when Kya hears Tate use the phrase, Kya asks him what he thinks it means and he responds that it “just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters.” But the author of the 2018 novel, Delia Owens, says she was inspired to use the phrase for her novel because her own mother used the phrase when she was a child.
BARKLEY COVE MEET AND GREET…
The Leading Cast of Where the Crawdads Sing are:
Daisy Edgar-Jones as Catherine “Kya” Clark
JoJo Regina as young Kya
Leslie France as mid-70s Kya
Taylor John Smith as Tate Walker
Luke David Blumm as young Tate
Sam Anderson as mid-70s Tate
Harris Dickinson as Chase Andrews
David Strathairn as Tom Milton
Michael Hyatt as Mabel Madison
Sterling Macer Jr. as James “Jumpin” Madison
Logan Macrae as Jeremy “Jodie” Clark
Will Bundon as young Jodie
Bill Kelly as Sheriff Jackson
Ahna O’Reilly as “Ma” Julienne Clark
Garret Dillahunt as “Pa” Jackson Clark
Jayson Warner Smith as Deputy Joe Purdue
Eric Ladin as Eric Chastain
LIGHTS, CAMERA…CRAWDADS!
Production for the film began on January 25, 2021, when it was announced that Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson would join the already cast Daisy Edgar-Jones in the film adaption of Delia Owens’ best-selling novel Where the Crawdads Sing. It was also announced that the film would be produced by Reese Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine Productions she would be joined by Lauren Neustadter in producing the film. The screenplay had already been adapted and written by Lucy Alibar and Olivia Newman was hired to direct the film. It was then announced in March of 2021 that David Strathairn and Jayson Warner Smith had signed on and joined the cast of the film. It was then announced a month later in April of 2021 that Garret Dillahunt, Michael Hyatt, Ahna O’Reilly, Sterling Macer Jr., and JoJo Regina were also added to the cast of the film adaption. A final casting announcement came in June of 2021 with Eric Ladin joining the cast. Principal photography began for the film on March 30, 2021, and continued until June 28, 2021, and took place in both New Orleans and Houma, Louisiana.
MUSIC FOR A CANADIAN SWIFTIE…
The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Where the Crawdads Sing was scored by Canadian composer Mychael Danna and contained 22 tracks. All of the tracks were composed by Danna except the original song “Carolina”, which was written and performed by singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Before the film had even begun production Swift had written and performed the song, having read the novel a few years before and stating that she “got absolutely lost in the book when she read it years ago and wanted to create something haunting and ethereal” for the film when she heard it was being produced. All of the other tracks on the soundtrack were produced in post-production.
You can watch the Official Audio Video for “Carolina” here:
CRAWDADS SING CHA-CHING….
Where the Crawdads Sing grossed $90.2 million at the box office in the United States and Canada and took in another $46.8 million in other territories for a worldwide box office of $137 million up against a budget of $24 million. From a financial point of view the film was a success, the week of its release the film was initially projected to gross around $10 million from the 3,626 theaters it opened in that weekend, but after making $7.3 million on its first day and including the $2.3 million the film made in Thursday night previews the estimated projected gross for the film was raised to $16 million. The film went on to gross for its debut, $17.3 million, and finished third at the box office behind Thor: Love and Thunder and Minions: The Rise of Gru which had been released in the previous weeks before.
A CRAWDADS PLEASANT SURPRISE…
In its second weekend at the box office, the film grossed another $10.4 million, and Forbes considered it a success for SONY and for the notion that non-franchise, adult-skewing, female-targeted studio films still have a future in the theatrical release. By August 18, 2022, the film had grossed four times its budget and further cementing that big-budget franchise movies are not necessarily the future of theater releases and that non-franchise films can still make money in a theatrical release. Where the Crawdads Sing doing well box office wise also showed that female-centric films in theaters post-pandemic can be successful. Reese Witherspoon said on the film’s unexpected success:
“This Movie wasn’t on a lot of people’s radars—and it’s counterprogramming, I know—but it’s a return to real filmmaking. It’s a heart-and-soul experience on film with beautiful sets and beautiful costumes and wonderful actors. It’s almost nostalgic for what you wanted to see in the summer.”
– Reese Witherspoon
JONES-ING FOR KYA…
Daisy Edgar-Jones has received critical praise for her performance as Kya. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 34% out of 205 critics’ reviews and with a majority being positive and having an average rating of 5.20 out of 10. The website’s critical consensus is that Edgar-Jones gave her all in the performance but that the adapted script of the novel was unable to produce a fully coherent drama based on that source material. Metacritic which weighs its reviews on an average assigned the film a score of 43 out of 100 and it was based on the reviews of 46 critics which indicated a mixed or average review of the film. The film has been praised for its cinematography which has been critiqued as creating a heartfelt engrossing Southern Gothic drama and one of the most gorgeously photographed films this year. The cinematography, production design, music, and Edgar-Jones’ performance may see some award-season buzz based on the critics’ reviews of the film.
CRITICAL CRAWDADS BE DAMNED…
But films these days are often not given an accurate review of what audiences think of the films when they are reviewed by critics. Audiences responded to the film well and gave it an “A-“. Most audience members polled said they would recommend the film to other viewers at 70%. Some critics seem to be judging films on their award capabilities more these days and forgo the actual intent of films to entertain an audience. Anthony D’Alessandro of Deadline Hollywood reported that the film doing well and working against the odds of what was anticipated box office wise was an example of a harshly reviewed film beating projections. Most filmgoers are starting to ignore the reviews of such sites as Rotten Tomatoes and choose to see the film and decide for themselves if the film was good or not. Where the Crawdads Sing proved that bad reviews don’t necessarily kill ticket sales for a film. Audiences have started to lean away from critics’ reviews and it being the deciding factor on if a film is good and profitable.
CRAWDADS SING WORLDWIDE…
The film had its world premiere at the Museum of Modern Art on July 11, 2022, and was released in the United States and Canada on July 15, 2022, having been pushed back a month from its original release date of June 24, 2022. It was released on July 22, 2022, which was the original delay date for release in the United States, but it was moved up a week to July 15. The film was released digitally on streaming platforms for purchase on September 6, 2022, and then it was released on Blu-ray and DVD and digital for rental the following week on September 13, 2022.
Where the Crawdads Sing is available to watch on Netflix now.