Where the Crawdads Sing

Abandoned by her family, Kya raises herself all alone in the marshes outside of her small town. When her former boyfriend is found dead, Kya is instantly branded by the local townspeople and law enforcement as the prime suspect for his murder.

Critics were largely dismissive of the adaptation, finding it tonally scattered and unable to reconcile its murder-mystery plot, romance, and coming-of-age elements into a coherent whole — though a handful found the lush cinematography and old-fashioned melodrama genuinely enjoyable. The near-universal bright spot is Daisy Edgar-Jones, whom even hostile reviewers credit with elevating thin material, while the sharpest disagreement falls on whether the film's glossy, romanticized approach to the source novel is an asset or a betrayal of it.