CADDO LAKE - Mark Reviews Movies

Caddo Lake, Max

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 9, 2024

Wisely, perhaps, the studio doesn't want a specific detail of the plot of Caddo Lake to be revealed. It is a surprise, to be sure, even if co-writer/directors Logan George and Celine Held make it clear that something is obviously amiss with the dual narratives of their winding and weaving tale. The key plot point is also something that sets the rest of the story in motion, and there are so many other developments and revelations to be discovered here that you'll hopefully forgive this writer if one component of that plotting accidentally slips through the cracks in this review.

It feels like a significant challenge to approach this film with that studio-issued caveat in mind. Then again, it's probably nothing compared to the challenges faced by George and Held, who have an infamously difficult narrative conceit in mind for their story of broken families on a mysterious bayou. Without directly saying what that gimmick is, it's one that has troubled and stymied even the best writers of science fiction for at least 129 years. There are two clues in that previous sentence, although the genre one isn't exactly accurate in terms of the means and methods of this particular story.

That's one of the reasons the film succeeds, because its plot rarely comes across as a gimmick. To be sure, George and Held have found a way around the many questions and contradictions that often plague stories that are like the one they've presented here, simply by treating the conceit as a plain fact with its own self-contained logic and sense of the inevitable.

Beyond that, though, the story remains a human one, even as it moves back and forth, to one side and another, and inward on itself, until everything lines up in unexpected but surprisingly reasonable ways. At its core, the film is a story of people lost, not only in terms of the gimmick that cannot be named, but also in relationship to who they are, what they have or have not experienced, and those deepest and sometimes most difficult of connections to family.

The two stories are both set on the swampland of Caddo Lake, a place that has a long history of humans trying to control it and tap into its resources. Those efforts have repeatedly failed, apparently, as we're introduced to Paris (Dylan O'Brien) trapped in a submerged car with a woman.

As the young man escapes and is helpless to save the stuck driver, it's revealed that the car drove off a bridge above the Louisiana lake, and someone later comments that such a structure was probably going to spell doom eventually, given its unnatural state in this place. Many things, almost all of them involving people's desire to control things in nature, fail over the course of this story, and then, there's the stuff that nobody can understand.

For Paris, it's the death of his mother, who drowned in the car after experiencing another in a long history of seizures. Paris won't accept that his mother's death was caused by a medical condition that her doctor understood, tried to treat, and seemed under control for as long as he can remember. Something else must have happened, but Paris' father (played by Sam Hennings) insists that no one, especially Paris, could have done anything.

The son still won't believe that, even though his search for another explanation has taken over his life and ruined his romance with Cee (Diana Hopper), who has returned to town for her grandfather's funeral after leaving because of Paris' obsession. The two seem to start over again, but will it be enough to stop him from looking for answers that might not exist?

Meanwhile, the other side of the story focuses on Ellie (Eliza Scanlen), who comes from a broken family that has recently turned into a different one. Her mother Celeste (Lauren Ambrose) has married Daiel (Eric Lange), and through that, Ellie now has a younger stepsister named Anna (Caroline Falk). The young girl follows her older sibling everywhere, but Ellie has a thorny relationship with her mother, never met the father who left her and Celeste before she was born, doesn't entirely trust her well-intentioned stepfather, and just wants to find a way out of this place.

Anna is one of the last things on Ellie's mind, and after staying at a friend's house following another argument with her mother, Ellie gets a call. Anna is missing.

George and Held establish these various dynamics and characterizations with some depth in a short amount of time. The key development is that both Paris and Ellie become fixated on the bayou. She's searching for her stepsister, who went missing trying to reach her, and he's convinced that an odd phenomenon in a specific part of the swamp, which causes something like a seizure for him, might explain what happened to his mother.

The rest of this is all plot, which might make it sound as if the filmmakers have abandoned these characters for the mechanics of a gimmick. In a way, they have, except that those characters are so firmly established and sympathetic by that point that we understand what's driving them through the mystery and puzzle in which they find themselves.

Beyond that, the puzzle itself is so enticingly intricate and constantly surprising that it almost doesn't matter. Caddo Lake creates an elaborate game of uncovering what's happening in the swamp, how these two seemingly distinct stories connect, and why these characters may have more in common than feelings of uncertainty and isolation. It's a strange film but a sound one, too, on a narrative and an emotional level.

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