Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

Directed by Olivia Newman. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harry Dickinson, David Strathairn, Sterling Macer Jr., Michael Hyatt, Garret Dillahunt, Jojo Regina, Eric Ladin, Logan Macrae, Bill Kelly. [PG-13]

Scarcely-credible potboiler set about fifty years ago in a North Carolina wetland flooded by overheated Southern Gothic clichés and a soapy, YA-style love triangle. A young woman named Kya (Edgar-Jones) was abandoned by her family as a child, so she’s grown up alone in a shack out in the marsh. Most in the nearby town turn their nose at her, but she still attracts the attention of a couple of good-looking guys who may not be vampires or werewolves, but all the mopey swooning found here is only about two steps above that kind of thing. Of course, there’s no debate over which young fella is better for her—the movie opens with the discovery of the body of the one who later turns out to be a womanizing bully, putting Kya on trial for murder—but they’re so uninteresting otherwise, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart in a lineup a half-hour after the movie ended. There’s some good photography on hand, and a cozily understated performance from Strathairn as Kya’s lawyer, but it’s otherwise a mess that can’t get past its confounding error at the film’s center: a protagonist that’s harder to swallow than a handful of fish hooks. See, this “marsh girl” isn’t wild or unkempt or unruly or socially-barbaric; no, she’s sorta shy, pretty, slow to trust, and is apparently a gifted writer despite barely being able to read for nearly her entire life (her nearly roadblock-free effort to get published makes her something of a Jo de Marsh—yes, that would be a “Little Women” pun of which I feel equal measures of pride and shame). Based on a bestselling book of the same name. Reese Witherspoon co-produced.

38/100