Where the Craw­dads Sing

Daisy Edgar-Jones is hav­ing the sort of mete­oric rise that is nor­mal­ly con­fined to the final act of a Dis­ney film. The British actress first peered out from behind a fringe with her giant doe eyes just two years ago as a Sal­ly Rooney sur­ro­gate in Nor­mal Peo­ple, before hav­ing parts of her devoured by Sebas­t­ian Stan in Fresh. Now she secures bona fide Hol­ly­wood movie star sta­tus by head­ing up Where The Craw­dads Sing, based on one of the best-sell­ing books of all time.

The book, from the famed author Delia Owens (who is want­ed by Zam­bia author­i­ties in con­nec­tion with a mur­der) tells the sto­ry of Kya (Jojo Regi­na), who is aban­doned by her fam­i­ly as a child and grows up alone in a North Car­oli­na marsh. She sur­vives by sell­ing mus­sels to a local gen­er­al store run by a sweet and hum­ble Black cou­ple, the likes of which are nor­mal­ly con­fined to the mid­dle act of Get Out. As she blos­soms into Daisy Edgar-Jones she embarks on two love affairs with bland­ly hand­some men called Chase (Tay­lor John Smith) and Tate (Har­ris Dick­in­son), one of whom ends up dead at the bot­tom of a fire tow­er. Kya is put on tri­al for their mur­der and has to face judge­ment from the com­mu­ni­ty that always reject­ed her as the ​“marsh girl”.

Edgar-Jones man­ages to not embar­rass her­self despite the heavy-hand­ed dia­logue, faith­ful­ly tak­en direct­ly from the book’s pages – its fan­dom will be pleased to hear lines like ​“I wasn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sen­tence could be so full.” made the cut and are said by Edgar-Jones with impres­sive sin­cer­i­ty. Mean­while, the always excel­lent David Strathairn does his absolute best play­ing Kya’s lawyer Tom Mil­ton but is lum­bered with court­room dia­logue that is writ­ten as though Atti­cus Finch suf­fered a head injury. Where the dreamy atmos­phere con­jured up in the mind of the read­er might have papered over the cracks, the utter naffness of the writ­ing is painful when tum­bling out of the mouths of actors who deserve better.

For a film about child aban­don­ment, domes­tic vio­lence, rape, crip­pling pover­ty, and the jus­tice sys­tem in 1960s North Car­oli­na, direc­tor Olivia Newman’s com­mit­ment to a cutesy aes­thet­ic is bizarre. The marsh girl who the towns­peo­ple describe as being ​“the miss­ing link” is immac­u­late at all times, with a fresh blowout and a dewy con­tour, cos­tumed in flow­ing white broderie anglaise sum­mer dress­es. Her ​“shack” feels curat­ed by an inte­ri­or design­er and the marsh itself is cap­tured in per­pet­u­al gold­en hour, all dap­pled sun­light and Caribbean blue seas.

Instead of a com­pli­cat­ed pro­tag­o­nist at the cen­tre of an atmos­pher­ic thriller Edgar-Jones seems trapped in an ill-advised ante­bel­lum-themed Tay­lor Swift music video, exac­er­bat­ed fur­ther by Swift’s dul­cet tones heard over the end cred­its. Where Benh Zeitlin’s Louisiana-set Beasts Of The South­ern Wild cov­ered sim­i­lar ter­ri­to­ry, Hushpuppy’s world was a mag­i­cal, ele­gant place even at its most bru­tal. Mean­while Kya’s is so tooth­less and the aes­thet­ic so rote that it feels like the cre­ation of a com­mit­tee of Instagrammers.