Directed by Celine Held and Logan George — Screenplay by Celine Held and Logan George.
Every once in a while, you encounter a film that completely blindsides you in the best way possible for a variety of reasons including you not really having the highest of expectations for it. Why didn’t I have high expectations? Well, I think the fact that it was being unceremoniously dumped onto a streaming service, in this case, Max, certainly didn’t prepare me for something particularly great. But, and I mean this wholeheartedly, Celine Held and Logan George’s Caddo Lake is one of the better feature-length surprises of the year thus far — not necessarily because it’s one of the best films of the year (it isn’t and it almost definitely won’t be regarded as such), but more so because of how much this captivating and relatively strong film came out of nowhere.
Caddo Lake follows Ellie (played by Eliza Scanlen), a teen who frequently gets into arguments with her mother (played by Lauren Ambrose) and her new husband, and Paris (played by Dylan O’Brien), an adult man who still struggles to come to terms with the circumstances of an accident that happened to him and his family some time ago. Although they don’t know each other, they both frequent and live near the same mysterious lake, and they have both witnessed strange happenings in a certain area of it. One day, Ellie’s younger half-sister goes missing, and when the older sister goes to look for her, she investigates the area Paris is also drawn to.
This is the kind of twisty narrative that you can just eat up (unsurprisingly, perhaps, it was produced by M. Night Shyamalan). It is also the kind of narrative that is probably experienced best when you don’t know all that much about it, which is exactly why I am being so vague in my brief description of the film. Although the opening may be a little bit slow, I, in my notes, likened the film to being on the other end of a fishing rod. It catches your attention, hooks you, gradually pulls you in, and then forcefully pulls you into its strange bayou mystery. Admittedly, the film didn’t manage to stay one step ahead of me for the duration of the runtime, as I saw certain things coming and figured out the equation a little bit earlier than the film probably intended. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed picking up on the little hints and teases that the film features and George and Held’s writing kept me emotionally engaged throughout. As a side note, a part of me does feel like maybe this would’ve benefitted from being told in a mini-series format so as to properly and more slowly set up things in the background (rather than foreground some teases that give it away here), but, at the same time, I had a really good time with the 100-ish minute runtime.
The film is primarily carried by the mystery and Ellie and Paris’ hurried and breathless exploration of it, but I also thought the filmmakers and actors did a good job of really nailing the feeling of a twisty, timey-wimey, wibbly-wobbly aspects of it that I won’t reveal here, while, at the same time, making the pivotal emotional scenes land. O’Brien, in particular, has a really strong scene in a hospital room that really makes you think about the way the people interacting are taking different things from the one-sided conversation. As someone who really thinks Lauren Ambrose is a strong actress, I did, however, think she was underserved by her portion of the narrative. The film doesn’t always put her gifts to full use.
I was lucky enough to watch the film with my Mother, who was absolutely spellbound by Celine Held and Logan George’s mystery thriller. I loved watching it with her, and I think one of the benefits of watching this with someone on a streaming service is the opportunity it gives you to talk through certain elements and clear up certain things along the way. On the whole, Caddo Lake is the kind of rich mystery that, despite perhaps sometimes showing its cards a little too early on for me, really makes you think about the fates of the characters and the events in life that seem impossible to explain. It probably won’t end up on a lot of critics’ end-of-the-year lists, but I thought it was a thoroughly engaging twisty thriller that deserves far better than to be forgotten in the vast and ever-growing content library of a streamer. So, this is a definite recommendation, if you’re looking for something to watch from the comfort of your own home.
7.7 out of 10
– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 