Caddo Lakeis the newest thriller to arrive on streaming and get audiences talking. The movie was released to Max on October 10th, and immediately it had critics and audiences captivated. Written and directed by Celine Held and Logan George, andproduced by M. Night Shyamalan, this film had an impressive team behind it, all of whom are no strangers to thrillers or crafting engaging mysteries. In front of the camera, Dylan O’Brien and Eliza Scanlen lead the cast as the two main characters, Paris and Ellie. These two actors turned in incredible performances, further pulling viewers into the world and story ofCaddo Lake.
Caddo Lake (2024)
What Is Caddo Lake About?
Caddo Lakeplays with genre in interesting ways, weaving family drama, mystery, and speculative fiction into a compelling tale with more than a few twists and turns to keep viewers on their toes. So far, the film has managed to garner mostly positive reviews from critics and viewers alike, and it’s certainly got people talking. So what is the story ofCaddo Lake?
The movie is set within a small community that lives along the Texas side of a lake that borders Texas and Louisiana. It follows two separate but, as revealed later, connected stories. Audiences watch asParis, a man from the area who lost his mother a few years back, struggles to understand how she diedand the alleged seizure disorder that led to her death. The other story followsEllie, a young woman who is struggling with feeling disconnected from her familyand who has avolatile relationship with her mother.
The first half of the movie focuses on Paris as he doggedly tries to figure out what happened to his mom, explain the odd symptoms of her seizure disorder, and make sense of things that don’t fit within the official explanation of her death. At the same time, the audience sees Ellie interact with the main members of her family – her mother, her younger stepsister Anna, and her stepdad. It becomes clear that Ellie’s displacement comes from feeling like she has no connection to her stepdad or that side of the family because they’re not biologically related.As she desperately tries to get her mom to reveal anything about her biological father, it is increasingly clear that this is the source of the tension between Ellie and her mom, and the cause of Ellie’s always acting out and resisting connecting with her remaining family.
As the film goes on, audiences will likely pick up on the idea that these two stories are intertwined, though it may not be immediately clear how. After Anna goes missing one morning, Ellie’s entire focus becomes finding her.While out in the bayou looking for Anna, she finds something that should be impossible – a portal that allows her to travel back and forth in time. In Paris’ story, he finds the same portal while he’s out in the bayou working, and the first part of their stories' connection is revealed.
What’s Going on With the Time Travel?
Ellie does find Anna, but it’s not the right Anna.She quickly realizes that this Anna is from the past, from a couple of weeks before the movie starts. When she returns Anna to their house, it’s to the scene of her mom cleaning up after a bad fight she and Ellie had had, and neither she nor her stepdad wants her there right then. This is how she realizes what that spot in the bayou, what that portal, can allow her to do.
Paris, in his story, finds a different Anna in the woods unconscious and bleeding. He takes her to go find help, but when he finds people, he sees them building the dam that already exists in his time. The men he leaves Anna with tell him that it’s 1952, and he realizes thathe’s time-traveled. This revelation leads him to determinedly declare that he can save his mom – he just has to get back to the right time.
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The rest of the film takes the audience along the time-traveling journeys of these two characters as Paris desperately tries to get to the day his mom dies and Ellie searches for Anna. Neither of them gets quite what they were hoping for, however, whenthe two of them essentially switch places. Paris finds himself in Ellie’s time, the present, and Ellie finds herself back in the past. At this point, audiences might have figured out at least part of the twist – thatParis is Ellie’s father, which is why he went missing and was never seen again.
The Final Twist Brings It All Together
In the present, Paris, who is an outsider in this version of Caddo Lake, is considered a suspect in Anna’s disappearance and gets arrested. When it starts to rain, he realizes that his opportunity to save his mom is slipping away from him, because he suspects that the part of Caddo Lake where the portal exists has to be empty of water for the portal to work. He ends up escaping and finds himself ina car chasewith the police, which ends on a bridge above the flooding dam. In order to avoid capture and in the hopes of still getting to the portal and saving his mom, he jumps from the bridge.
Back in the past, Ellie finds a store that offers computer use and internet access so she can try and find her sister. She looks up Anna Bennett, her sister’s full name, but comes back with nothing. In a moment of genius or desperation, she decides to look up Anna Lang – the name of her paternal grandmother. In researching Anna Lang, she finds not only news about the car crash that ended her life but also information about her life growing up.
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Going all the way back to Anna Lang’s childhood, she finds a picture from an orphanage and immediately recognizes her little sister. This is when the big plot twist comes to light –Anna, Ellie’s younger stepsister, is also Anna Lang, Ellie’s grandmother and Paris’s mother. When Paris took her to get help in 1952, she was ultimately left there and had to grow up in the past. Eventually, she met and married Paris’ dad and had Paris. It is this revelation that finally brings peace to Ellie – she now knows that she is, in fact, connected to her stepfather and his side of the family through Anna.
