Film criticism has changed a lot over the years. There was a time when critics had no qualms about telling readers the whole plot of a movie, on or before opening weekend, up to and including the finale. The idea was, if you were reading criticism it meant you were interested in reading criticism, and you knew damn well that meant the critic was going to talk about what actually happens in the film. Then again motion pictures as a whole used to be a lot less rarefied. You’d buy a ticket and walk into a theater at any point in the film, stick around for the trailers and news reels and shorts, and then you’d watch another picture, and then maybe hang around to catch the first half of the movie you already saw the end of.
Nowadays, nobody wants to be spoiled. That’s understandable. In a century where the sum of nearly all human knowledge is available in a little rectangle in your pocket, an unsullied discovery has greater value than ever. It can be tricky to review a film before its release and not talk about some of its bigger moments in detail, but generally speaking it’s polite to leave something for the audience to experience wholly for themselves.
But then there’s f–ing “Caddo Lake,” a genuinely strong and intriguing film where practically the whole plot — according to the publicity materials — is considered off-limits. How the heck do you critique a film like this in a timely manner? We’re not even supposed to tell you the genre of this danged thing. I’ve had to burn off two whole paragraphs just to set up why this is so frustrating. The number of words I’ve used to describe the actual film itself is barely out of the single digits.
Here’s what I can tell you: “Caddo Lake” stars Dylan O’Brien (“Love and Monsters”) and Eliza Scanlen (“Little Women”). It takes place on and around Caddo Lake, an actual lake the borders both Texas and Louisiana. O’Brien plays Paris, who clears old pipes and debris out of the lake for a living, and is still grieving the tragic death of his mother in a car crash. Scanlen plays Ellie, whose relationship with her mother (Lauren Ambrose) and stepfather (Eric Lange) is strained, because Ellie’s birth father went missing years ago. But Ellie loves her 9-year-old stepsister Anna (Caroline Falk), and Anna loves her too.
One day, Anna goes missing.
Aaaaaand that’s it.
That’s where I leave you.
Everything after that is for you to find out for yourself, forcing me to make general statements about tone and quality and themes, and struggle to support qualitative remarks because I can’t cite specific examples from the text. This is all part of “Red Eye Syndrome,” named after a 2005 Wes Craven movie starring Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams, which pretends to be a romance in the first act, before revealing itself to be a thriller. They couldn’t market it as a romance because anyone who bought a ticket for one would feel betrayed, so they just ruined the twist in all the marketing and the audience wound up way ahead of the movie, which kinda spoiled it for a while. (Apologies for ruining a 19-year-old movie you probably forgot existed.)
The point is, when the basic premise of a movie is treated like a twist, it’s pretty tough to talk about it. But let’s try. “Caddo Lake” has a mystery element, right? Well, as you can imagine, since I’m being coy about this, there’s more to it than meets the eye. The revelations ask a lot of questions, and the movie answers most of them. It’s intelligently crafted and falls together quite well, despite a narrative that turns complicated quite quickly. You are safe in writer/directors Logan George and Celine Held’s hands. They’ve thought it all through.
At the root of the story is a series of dramatic relationships between people who eventually interact and who reveal more about themselves. It’s those revelations, I’m comfortable saying, that form the central nervous system of “Caddo Lake.” These people and their sad lives, tainted by loss and abandonment, are what drives it all. It’s a mystery, sure, but like all the best mysteries it’s not about revealing who did what, but how and why it happened in the first place.
Dylan O’Brien is an excellent lead and always has been, but it’s Eliza Scanlen who takes “Caddo Lake” and runs with it. Her character comes from a seemingly normal or at least relatively familiar background, but she makes a series of distinct and subtle choices that render her unique against her surroundings. In particular, Scanlen proves to be a great cinematic thinker: She spends a lot of the movie sussing out what’s happening inside her head, with little or no dialogue, and we can follow her whole thought patterns and come to the same conclusions she does. It’s a deceptively difficult skill. Not every actor has mastered it, but Eliza Scanlen is a total pro.
“Caddo Lake” culminates in a sentiment that clarifies why we went through everything we just went through, because as convoluted as the plot gets it’s ultimately a film about human connection and what happens when those connections feel severed. It’s got thrills and twists and yet it’s best approached as a serious drama, not a “genre movie,” because as a serious drama it truly excels. It’s sad and meaningful, not just clever and tricky, and what you’ll take away from it couldn’t have been spoiled even if I did describe what happened. You’ll emerge from the film feeling love and loss and fragility and strength, and that will linger long after anyone cares what the damn premise was.
“Caddo Lake” is now streaming on Max.
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