COURTESY OF SCREEN GEMS
There are people who are going to undoubtedly love the new film Where the Crawdads Sing, the gripping murder thriller that hit theaters this weekend. I was not one of them.
Sure, the book it’s based on is incredibly popular. Sure, lead Daisy Edgar-Jones is spellbinding. Sure, the Reese Witherspoon of it all is irresistible. (The Oscar-winner produced the film under her Hello Sunshine banner.) But no matter how juicy the mystery at the center of the story got—and it gets fairly intense—I couldn’t shake my discomfort over scandalous reports about Delia Owens, who wrote the book and is wanted for questioning in an actual murder. Nor could I get past the uncomfortable, somewhat gross relationship at the center of the film.
That romance in Where the Crawdads Sing hinges on the fact that Tate (Taylor John Smith)—a smart, kind, handsome young boy—teaches Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) how to read and write. There are obvious scenes of a savior complex with Tate, who finds their educational dynamic titillating in a way that I found really off putting. Though their sex scenes are steamy and they have great chemistry, there’s little reason for Tate to fall in love with the wild woman of the marsh. She has no personality, other than being gorgeous, broken, and needing his help.