Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers from Caddo Lake.
Summary
Just in time for Halloween season, Max has a spooky thriller that was produced by M. Night Shyamalan. In the wake ofTrapbeing released earlierin 2024 the man has been quite busy. He’s been busy even if he didn’t direct theCaddo Lakefor theMaxstreaming service.
DespiteCaddo Lakenot being directed by M. Night, it’s still got some twists and turns that certainly remind audiences ofsome of his other projects. Perhaps the best part of the film is that it starts off feeling like a straightforward mystery set in a Texas lakeside community but soon offers some serious twists and turns that bend the mind of anyone paying attention.
What Is Caddo Lake About?
On its face,Caddo Lakeis a family drama that centers around two families that have had similar yet different tragedies hit them that have left people a little broken. It’s not until about halfway through the film that thescience fiction aspects start to kick in.
On one side is Paris, a young man who is trying to figure out why his relatively young mom died years earlier despite a medical condition being ruled as the cause of a car crash on a bridge above Caddo Lake. Paris is so convinced that there is something odd about his mom’s death that he’s spent far too much of his life trying to solve a mystery that no one else believes even exists. Hisattempts to solve this mysteryhave even caused problems in his relationship with Cee, a woman who is the love of his life.
Cast
Dylan O’Brien (Paris), Eliza Scanlen (Ellie), Caroline Falk (Anna), Lauren Ambrose (Celeste), Diana Hopper (Cee)
How to Watch
Max
On theother side of the storyare Ellie, Celeste’s teen daughter, who remarries after Ellie’s father leaves them some time back. And at the center of the mystery is Anna, the stepsister of Ellie who looks up to her. While the teen is intent on fighting with her mother and making it clear she doesn’t consider her step-father as part of the family she clearly has a bond with Anna. That becomes especially obvious when Anna goes missing one night and Ellie embarks on an adventure to try and find her. It’s after her disappearance that the science fiction aspects ofCaddo Lakekick in.
While Paris is just going about his business and Ellie is looking for her stepsister, both managed to find Anna, though Ellie realizes that somehow she’s been transported a few days back in time as her stepsister doesn’t even think a full day has passed when it’s actually been a month. Paris finds an injured Anna and when he starts running through the area looking for help, he realizes he’s been transported back to 1952. He leaves Anna with some workers in that period and runs off, eventually being transported to 2022 by thesame oddity in the swampy areacreated by Caddo Lake.
Meanwhile, Ellie is transported into 2005 while she’s searching for Anna and begins to piece together just what has happened to the younger girl after she runs into a woman who is wearing the same necklace that Anna had the last time the two girls saw each other. Things really start to click into place for Ellie when Cee explains she got the necklace from her husband. In 2022, Paris is also starting to realize what happened to Anna and how she disappeared forever and the mystery starts to come to a head as both main characters realize how the lake has affected both their lives.
How does Caddo Lake end?
The mystery of Caddo Lake finally unfolds for both Paris and Ellie at roughly the same point. Ellie, back in 2005 puts together the age of Paris' mother, Anna and how far back she needed to look on the internet to find her at a school back in the 1950s. She does end up finding her sister, left behind in the past after she was nursed back to health from the people Paris left her with when he traveled all the way back in time.
Meanwhile, Paris realizes that Anna, the girl he rescued and left in the past, ended up being his mother, who died at the age of 55. Ellie also realizes that because she and Paris had beencriss crossing through timethrough Caddo Lake, Cee was actually a younger Celeste, her mother. She also realized that her father had not left her and her mother on purpose but had been transported into the future against his will by going through the time warp that was located in the swampy area. At the very end of the movie, the news reports show Paris, who drowned in the present as the dam for Caddo Lake broke, as someone who was considered a person of interest in the disappearance of Anna.
Present-day Celeste is watching the news while Ellie walks in and it’s clear that both women realize that young Paris from the past was now somehow in the present and that he hadn’t abandoned them, but was instead forced to leave. It’s insinuated that Ellie will explain everything that happened asCaddo Lakecomes to an end.
