As the mercury rises, this is a chance for moviegoers to get a breath of fresh air with a family bucket of finger-licking southern fried twaddle. Adapted from a bestselling Beach read by Delia Owens, and produced by Reese Witherspoonwhich made the novel one of Reese’s Book Club’s monthly favorites shortly after its publication. an ex-lover and taken to court.
Kya is played by Normal People Daisy Edgar-Jones, which even the book’s staunchest fans will have to admit that its appearance and clothing are less like a wild woman of the woods than a Dalston houseplant influencer. As for the deceased, he’s Harris Dickinson’s Chase Andrews, a chiseled villain from the nearby town whose initially flirtatious relationship with Kya turned toxic in recent years.
When Chase’s body is discovered at the foot of a rickety lighthouse in the swamps, the townspeople’s suspicions naturally fall on this strange and withdrawn young woman, who has been incredibly self-sufficient in her swamp hut since childhood. Kya’s father (Garret Dillahunt) was a hot-headed brute, whose fear stems (it’s implied) from his time in the military. In an early, accidentally ridiculous flashback, we see her mother and older siblings pack their bags and leave the house one by one, like the Von Trapp children happily going to bed. None of them, of course, think of taking Kya with them: if they did, the story wouldn’t work.
‘Where the Crayfish Sing’ is Kya’s older brother’s skin-crawling, sentimental description of a quiet place on the water where she should retreat during her father’s violent wrath. Note, however, that no crayfish (i.e. freshwater crayfish) appear in the film, let alone sing anything, although there is a ballad at the end performed by Taylor Swift.
As in the novel, Lucy Alibar’s screenplay shifts back and forth between Kya and Chase’s crushing romance in the recent past and her arrest and courtroom battle in the present. Her corner there is fought over by Tom Milton (David Strathairn), a righteous Atticus Finch type and one of the few residents of Barkley Cove to have shown any kindness to Kya in her youth. The others are Jumpin’ and Mabel, a black married couple played by Sterling Macer Jr and Michael Hyatt, who own a grocery store in the swamp, and whose only apparent purpose in life is to look at Kya with twinkling concern as they go through their strolling doors. † What else did black people in 1960s North Carolina have to worry about?