Caddo Lake’s Twist Can’t Make Up For Its Lackluster Beginning

An eight-year-old girl mysteriously vanishes, sparking a full on investigation into her disappearance. In the wake of the mystery, a series of past deaths and disappearances within this small town start to connect, revealing one family’s broken and twisted history.

Caddo Lake teeters on the edge of being a gripping thriller, but takes too long to intrigue the audience with this time turning tale. Much of the first and second act are filled with aimless scenes that have more to do with mood and atmosphere than driving the plot. While Dylan O’Brien and Eliza Scanlen make captivating leads, their performance gets lost in the attempted suspense in the first half.

Ellie, played by Scanlen, is in search of her missing half sister when she stumbles upon an odd area of Caddo Lake that leads to a phenomenon of time travel and confusion. Thrust into a previous decade, she discovers that her sister is not an eight year old in the 2020s, but rather a grown woman who had lived a full life previously after getting stuck in Caddo Lake.

Meanwhile O’Brien as Paris is a young man struggling with the sudden loss of his mother that he deems as his fault. Unknown to him, his mother was part of the lake’s time travel cycle and he gets stuck in a whirlwind of interchanging decades as he attempts to uncover the truth.

The twist in the third act is when things really get interesting, but up until that point it is hard to hold the audiences’ attention. The lead up to the time warp reveal lacks intrigue and stakes for a thriller. These characters don’t have enough story to make the first half worthwhile to sit through.

Even after it is revealed that whoever enters this area of the lake is able to travel back in time, there are still so many unanswered questions. While this twist is integral to the plot, it doesn’t make up for the lackluster beginning and comes far too late into the movie. The concept of this film is an interesting take on the time travel genre, but lacks a clear and compelling execution leaving the audience with more questions than answers.

Caddo Lake is streaming on Max.