Caddo Lake Review: An M. Night Shyamalan-produced thriller full of surprises

PLOT: When an eight-year-old girl mysteriously vanishes, a series of past deaths and disappearances start to link together, forever altering a broken family’s history.

REVIEW: When you stick the name M. Night Shyamalan in your marketing, you promise audiences a particular type of film. The trailer for Caddo Lake boasts Shyamalan’s credit as producer, coupled with the October debut on Max, making it seem like Caddo Lake is a dark thriller or horror film when it is anything but. Set in the sprawling wetland on the border between Louisiana and Texas, the real Caddo Lake is a protected body of water that has been important to indigenous peoples since before the United States even existed. With oil discovered in the late 20th Century, the lake took on a different importance, which factors into this mystery with an unexpected twist. With strong leading performances from Dylan O’Brien and Eliza Scanlen, Caddo Lake is not the movie I expected it to be based on the trailer, and that is a good thing.

Caddo Lake follows Paris (Dylan O’Brien), who lives and works on the titular lake. Mourning the death of his mother, which he blames on himself, Paris is obsessed with trying to figure out how her medical condition involving seizures could have been addressed sooner. We also meet Ellie (Eliza Scanlen), the daughter of Celeste (Lauren Ambrose), who struggles to look for her biological father. Ellie has a strong bond with her stepsister, Anna (Caroline Falk), but cannot help but be focused on learning about her absent father. When Anna tries to follow Ellie onto Caddo Lake, the young girl disappears. This prompts a massive search across the flooded forest to find Anna, pulling Ellie and Paris deeper into the labyrinthine body of water. With strange sounds emanating from the wooded lake, both Paris and Ellie discover something shocking about what lies in Caddo Lake.

Eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted additional details about Caddo Lake in the trailer, but the film unveils them differently. The first half of Caddo Lake focuses on showing audiences what life is like alongside the sprawling lake. The unique lifestyle is not quite rural and not quite like any typical populated areas usually seen on film before. The blue-collar population is not a direct factor in the plot, but as the story develops, we are driven to connect the natural landscape of the lake to the lives of those who reside near it. For about an hour, the film feels like a portrait of multiple families inhabiting the same general area before Anna’s disappearance draws the narratives together. At that point, the strangeness showcased in the trailer comes into play and changes Caddo Lake from what feels like an indie drama into something altogether different. Divulging what happens and how it occurs would be a disservice to the movie. While it is initially hard to follow what is going on, everything comes together in the end.

Were it not for the leads, Caddo Lake could have sunk had weaker actors portrayed Paris and Ellie. Dylan O’Brien has come a long way since The Maze Runner with turns in Love and Monsters and the upcoming Saturday Night showing his range as an actor. Eliza Scanlen is also impressive after a stellar turn in HBO’s Sharp Objects, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, and Shyamalan’s Old. Another Shyamalan veteran, Lauren Ambrose, is solid alongside Eric Lange in key supporting roles. Still, so much of the screen time focuses on O’Brien and Scanlen that without their depth in playing these characters, Caddo Lake would have crumbled under a very convoluted plot that requires a great deal of attention to understand. Whether or not you enjoy this film will likely hinge on how you feel about these two actors.

Caddo Lake is the second film by writer/director duo Celine Held and Logan George. After their well-received debut film Topside, Held and George were inspired to make a film about the title lake after seeing a photograph of it. Filmed on location in Louisiana, Caddo Lake makes great use of the bayou setting with atmospheric cinematography by Lowell A. Meyer. The ultimate problem with this movie is keeping the plot threads straight, as the lack of clear exposition requires the viewer to parse things quickly. I actually had to take out a piece of paper and jot down how everything connected. Once I did, it made tenuous sense to me, but charting a film to understand it can sometimes be too much for an average viewer to put into enjoying a movie. If you have found it challenging to piece together a standard M. Night Shyamalan plot twist, Caddo Lake will take things to the next level.

Caddo Lake is an interesting experiment that takes some familiar tropes from genre films and tries to make something new out of them. But, there are moments in the film where it feels too disjointed from what it is trying to be while others are blatantly on the nose. Both Held and George have made two intriguing films to start their directorial careers, and I am interested in seeing what they do next. Caddo Lake feels like a movie that audiences will walk away from, either rolling their eyes or scratching their heads. I doubt either is what the filmmakers were going for, but it is an interesting attempt to tell a new type of story.

Caddo Lake premieres October 10th on Max.

Caddo Lake

GOOD

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