Caddo Lake
In the words of one of Max’s original Caddo Lake protagonists, Paris Long: “If you can’t explain yourself, you are going nowhere”. The quote is insightful, but this time it worries me, because I’m not sure I could give a full explanation of the events of this film, and so I’m not sure where I would end up.
The point is, though, this is not the only approach some internet ‘plot hole’ critics and purists love using always addressing the issue at hand, for example, whatever the missing element might be. Sometimes it is even better if one of the filmmakers does not manage to cross every T and dot every I, appealing to an emotional theatre more than a practical one and allowing the audience to follow the movie. I expect a certain outrage over the twist which makes “Caddo Lake” what it is, which, by the way, I can’t discuss as per network orders. This being said, I liked how the movie is indeed a streaming thriller, but it turns out to be different. It also helps having a pair of leads who seem completely drained out of the vanity that lesser performers with a script this crazy and fundamental would never acommodate. Cuckoo Lake it could be called.
And of course, cattishness can be avoided, but it won’t make the film more hypothetical it will transform it into an entirely different bird after all, Caddo Lake doesn’t exist in real life like, but exists in reality rather than myths or blues, immersed rather than resembling a bunch of swamps and woods along the Texas Louisiana border.
Logan George & Celine Held writing, directing team (who were involved with three episodes of ‘Servant’ which somewhat explains M. Night Shyamalan’s involvement as a producer for this movie) allegedly took their cue from the real life Caddo Lake which has some treacherous kind of energy that is rooted in the locals over the years. They have envisioned a narrative of three lost souls in this lethal place that are connected in more ways than they could ever imagine and again, I can’t divulge in the spoilers.
Paris (Dylan O’Brien, who is also busy executing a brilliant Dan Aykroyd impression in ‘SNL’) is dealing with the trauma brought on from the death of his mother she had some sort of seizure while driving and the two of them ended up flying off a bridge. Guilt as a survivor resides in him and O’Brien shows us the grief of a man attempting to understand what was going on with his mom, even to the extent of confronting her physician in the car park. But both also understand there may be more to this occurrence than meets the eye, something more sinister that lurks beneath Caddo Lake’s surface.
Next, we meet Ellie (played by Eliza Scanlen, who shone in ‘Sharp Objects’) who yearns for the father she has never met, and butts heads with her mother (Lauren Ambrose appears in the underrated Servant), another relation in the mix. Her step-father Daniel (Eric Lange) attempts to repair decidedly damaged relationships, but in the case of Ellie, the character is basically a hermit whose most reliable companion seems to be her eight year old step sibling, Anna Caroline Falk. After a row within the family, Ellie storms into the lake while Anna goes after her only to seemingly vanish from the surface of the world. Ellie’s story is woven into Paris almost seamlessly through her disappearance in a manner that I assure you would be impossible to prepare for even after one hundred tries.
This brings me to my last complaint about the show Caddo Lake’ which I am convinced is a procedural drama in its broad outlines and a blue collar drama for a good while. However, the biggest reason why something will not be right from their use as producers Shyamalan’s name and this year’s streaming season is absolutely the most genre focused out of all of them so far is Shyamalan’s name. This doesn’t just go sideways. It goes at least in three directions simultaneously often in ways that are sn almost impossible to complete but how far do you like to be stuck in this.
I know that because I’ve been that reviewer who watches more than her share of films that reveal their hand by the end of the third act but seeing someone beat the bush just makes me appreciate the craft I saw employed in Caddo Lake. Again, it is truly beneficial to have a cast that takes the focus of their performance to be rush and not plot twists and that is precisely what O’Brien and Scanlen do for these poor executed characters while making it more believable even with the comparatively absurd plots in the way this narrative wraps around itself.
It is unfortunate that the culmination heavily depends on Ellie’s extensive net surfing for the film to the best of its ability explain how everything connects, but this is excusable for a movie that is better viewed without any prior knowledge, watching how this chronicle of the family gets so entangled in the weirdest parts of the world, the regions surrounding Caddo Lake.
Also, Watch On Putlocker.