Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
One doesnt have to have loved Delia Owenss debut novel to see why it has appealed to countless readers.
It feels like an illustration more than an adaptation.
They barely register as people.
Its no surprise that her novel works best as an extension of her prior work.
Theres little sense of wildness, of unpredictability or abandon.
Readers will of course often imagine controls differently than film adaptations, but thats not the problem here.
(At times, I wondered if some of the landscape shots might actually have been green-screened in.)
None of these would necessarily be problems if the film werent otherwise so faithful to the books narrative.
This is the challenge of literary condensation.
That leaves the movie with a genre-friendly structure, but almost nothing to populate it with.
We dont ever really see what the prosecutions case is against Kya.
So, forget the crawdads, the turkeys, the fireflies, the seashells, and the snow geese.
Forget even the jailhouse cat.
The movie is a snake that eats itself.
