Where the Crawdads Sing review, Culture Whisper
In this age of prestige television, film adaptations of average-length novels are becoming less appealing. For series based on books, writers and directors can facilitate a deeper devotion to the source while enjoying more creative freedom to play around.
Where the Crawdads Sing – based on the booming bestseller from reclusive naturalist Delia Owens – is by no means the worst example of a film that should've been a series. In fact, it’s a fairly serviceable adaptation: retelling, in essence, a 60s murder mystery that pits an ostracised woman against the prejudices of the nearby townsfolk.
But in order to fit within the limits of the medium, this film accelerates, restructures and exacerbates the storytelling. Director Olivia Newman and screenwriter Lucy Alibar lose the bulk of Owens’s fuggy atmosphere as well as her delicate (if occasionally laborious) pacing. This critic can’t be the only reader/viewer to dream of a slower, superior limited series while watching.
