Four years ago, Olivia Newman—known for First Match on Netflix—directed an adaptation of a prominent murder mystery based on one of the best-selling novels of all time, which topped The New York Times bestseller list in both 2019 and 2020. While the film earned multiple accolades upon its release and performed strongly commercially, it divided critics and audiences, with praise for its atmosphere and lead performance offset by criticism of its pacing and tonal choices.
Described as To Kill a Mockingbird meets The Notebook, Where the Crawdads Sing was released on July 15, 2022. It was written by Lucy Alibar, inspired by the 2018 novel by Delia Owens. The film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as Catherine “Kya” Clark, an isolated yet resilient young woman who raises herself to adulthood in the North Carolina marshlands, eventually becoming a skilled naturalist. Drawn to two young men from town, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world, but when one of them is found dead, she is immediately cast as the prime suspect and is put on trial for murder.
Despite its controversial reception, Where the Crawdads Sing has found renewed appeal on streaming platforms. The mystery drama ranks among the ten most popular titles on the free streaming service Tubi, appearing on the charts just 24 hours earlier. This is a notable resurgence for the film, which was a box office success during its theatrical run, grossing $144.3 million against a $24 million budget. Other stars featured in Where the Crawdads Sing are Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., JojoRegina, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna O’Reilly, and David Strathairn.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Here’s What Critics Said About ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’
As seen on Rotten Tomatoes, Where the Crawdads Sing has a 34% critics’ score based on 221 reviews, with 145 of them being negative. Among these is Collider’s review by Alyse Wax, which gives the murder mystery a D rating, noting that the “weirdly uncomfortable movie” is not a great recommendation for viewers who haven’t read the book. Similarly, MovieWeb rates the film 2.5 out of 5 stars, pointing out flaws such as “sluggish pacing, obvious characterizations, and a thinly developed mystery,” which ultimately undermine the story of its otherwise compelling protagonist. Screen Rant also awards it 2.5 out of 5 stars, praising Edgar-Jones’ performance but criticizing the film for stumbling in its transition from page to screen.
