Brandon White’s review published on Letterboxd:
Well, I can at least hope that Daisy Edgar-Jones gets some attention since she's slowly progressing through her career by now having a film with her as the main role in theaters near me. I just wish that she's in a better movie because she seems to be giving great performances in both Fresh and this, but those films just aren't good enough to get there yet. This film feels like a Nicholas Sparks film with so much corniness to it that I just don't buy the romance all that much. There was literally a scene where fake CGI leaves were going around them and started to make out for the first time, and I was rolling my eyes when that happened. I'm all for romances that make my heart gush out, but this was just stupid. The romance story felt way too by the numbers and generic that I was honestly getting bored at times because I just didn't find the story all that engaging. When it got to the courtroom scenes, those I find interesting, especially when watching both sides on things that kept me intrigued by the mystery of it. I just wish the film focused more on that than the flashback scenes that have their moments that I find interesting but very much felt uninspired that doesn't do much for going at a nonlinear structure approach to it. It has a nice beautiful scenery to it that has some nice shots here or there, and the Taylor Swift song Carolina is a nice haunting vibe of a song that makes more sense in context to the overall story. There were some character choice moments that I find questionable that the film doesn't address, and the father was just literally a walking stereotype of drunkenness. Where the Crawdads Sing is a film that I feel could've been good, but I just end up feeling disappointed despite having it at low expectations. I think the end result of it made me sad in a way, which I wasn't expecting, and it worked against the film.