"Where the Crawdads Sing" is a throwback mystery story in a certain sense: like Agatha Christie stories or Sherlock Holmes adaptations, it doesn't unravel the knot at its center until the very final scene. The story of "Marsh Girl" Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is one of tragedy, familial abandonment, and quiet reflection in nature. It straddles the line between period piece, courtroom drama, and murder mystery, and by the end has become something unique. But its ramshackle approach to its own plot leaves more than a few stones unturned in order to deliver the final twist.

Like many other recent movies, "Where the Crawdads Sing" plays with one hand behind its back, and doesn't reveal just how unreliable a narrator Kya is until we've made certain assumptions about her. Due to the popularity of the Delia Owens novel that it's based on, it's likely that a lot of the audience that propelled it to a strong box office showing already had the twist spoiled in advance. This probably explains why the Rotten Tomatoes audience score for the movie is vastly higher than the critics score: if you know the ending, the movie is more about the texture and the performances rather than trying to outguess the plot. But for the rest of us with sticking points, these are all of the unanswered questions in "Where the Crawdads Sing."