Daisy Ridley is a star in our favorite book club

Do you feel that chill in the air, followed by a feeling of alienation from the trappings of modern society? This is a sign that Hot Girl Summer has been replaced by Marsh Girl Autumn. After the success of warm weather Where Crawdads Singthe film adaptation of the best-selling novel about a sensitive swamp girl accused of murder by shoe-wearers and belt-buyers, we are witnessing a swamp renaissance: in No one will save you, Kaitlyn Dever’s quiet, isolated life filled with popular hobbies that masked her inner pain had the energy of a true swamp girl. now Daughter of the Marsh King He arrives as a more powerful heir to Crowds Throne, because he also realizes that the true creature of the American swamp can only be played by a stunningly beautiful British actress with perfect skin and a pink name.

Helena Pelletier, Daisy Ridley’s character in the Daughter of March Kingshe had a more difficult upbringing than that played by the young Daisy Edgar-Jones Crowds. After all, Helena’s childhood accessories look like DIY weapons and tattoo tools, not Anthropologie-ready fashions and some nice organic skin cream, one would assume. First seen as a child, played by Brooklynn Prince, Helena bonds with her surviving father Jacob (Ben Mendelsohn), teaching her to hunt and generally fend for herself from their idyllic cabin in the woods. In a clever bit of close-up POV confusion, Helena doesn’t understand why her mother (Caren Pistorius) sometimes seems so contentious with Jacob — until a stranger on a quad bike happens upon their cabin next to the swamp, and suddenly Helena is part of an impromptu escape plan with her mother on the lam. Thinking.

Even when she’s out in the woods, Helena struggles to comprehend what she’s learned: that her mother was kidnapped by Jacob, and although the film doesn’t quite say it out loud, she is the product of rape. As Jacob heads toward prison for his crimes, the film shifts to adult Helena, played by Ridley. She lives a normal life, married to Steven (Garrett Hedlund) and raising her daughter, while still adhering to the swamp girl rule by naming the baby Marigold (Joy Carson). Although Helena has broken her sense of attachment to her father/captor, she still has not fully resolved her childhood trauma later on, preferring to keep her past a secret from everyone, even her family. (Hedlund is forced to flesh out her hero-level lack of empathy as the husband who seems vaguely upset from the jump.) But when Jacob’s prison transport suffers a freak accident, her past can no longer be repressed or avoided.

Like her siblings Swamp Girl, Daughter of the Marsh King He divides his time between staring at a character’s inability to integrate easily into polite society and indulging the fantasy of self-reliant specialization. Ridley seems particularly drawn to the mix, both in her featured role as a lone character on a desert planet in the film star Wars A sequel or role as isolated office cubicle Fran in the yet-to-be-released Sundance entry Sometimes I think about death, basically a swamp girl with a day job. It’s enough of a preoccupation for this still-developing star, and enough of a more broadly applicable personality type, to simply overcome any accusations of theft. Crowds. (in addition to, Daughter of March King The source material actually predates it Crowds book.)

Philippe Bossuet/Lionsgate

However, there is a less satisfactory point of comparison: room, another novel turned film about a psychopath who creates a familial bond through horrific abuse and oppression. This engaging story is made all the more terrifying by its strict adherence to the child’s point of view, obscured by his innocence and his mother’s work. Daughter of March King Play with this a little at first before giving in to the mechanics of a stalker thriller, the kind of film in which a predator leaves a small detail horribly wrong to indicate, incontrovertibly, that he’s been sneaking around his prey’s house.

Director Neil Berger has worked his way through a filmography more impressive for the scope of his genre than for its quality, and here he throws himself into the brief, mediocre style of a thriller, all greenery and dramatic angles. There’s also pleasure in pitting Mendelsohn, as a cunning, unstoppable middle-aged man, against Ridley’s equally predictable wrath. (star Wars Fans may also appreciate Rey’s duel against Director Krennic from Rogue oneminus the lightsaber.) For most of the film, Berger avoids the weak literary heft that plagues so many best-selling adaptations—the sense of a film guided by sales numbers that it is a very important work indeed.

Philippe Bossuet/Lionsgate

However there is a taste for Daughter of the Marsh King This leaves the film idle, for a while, between raising real psychological challenges and going all-in on thrilling survival mode. Ridley is talented enough for either, and it would be especially fun to see her play a more desperate, less cocky action heroine. However, so far, even the most genre-inclined Swamp Girls films have behaved with a little too much decorum – which is a polite way of saying they take a clichéd, remedial approach to the pulp they’re selling. Occasionally, Daughter of the Marsh King He seems to be looking for brutal B-movie cruelty, and returns with a general recovery.