Caddo Lake (2024)

Caddo Lake (2024) American film directed by Celine Held and Logan George. A dramatic film… with some pretty unbearable characters! Let’s just say it’s about people with serious communication problems, particularly a mother and her teenage daughter.

That said, the acting is very good. The film is totally unbearable because it’s incomprehensible. So I waited for an extraordinary explanation and I was really afraid of being disappointed, as well as feeling like I’d wasted my precious time. And that’s exactly what happened!

When Dylan O’Brien is in the cast, there’s bound to be some supernatural stuff going on, as well as some action scenes! But it’s precisely this sci-fi aspect that spoils this film. In a film like The Lake House/Entre deux rives (2006), it was fine. But not so much here! Although the story is nevertheless interesting, especially when we discover the outcomes, the film lapses into length and slowness.

O’Brien is best known for his role as Stiles (Mieczyslaw) Stilinski in the Teen Wolf TV series (2011-2017) and as Thomas in The Labyrinth trilogy (2014-2018). Eliza Scanlen, meanwhile, can be found in The (Four) Daughters of Doctor March (Little Women), as well as in Old (2021). Is it any surprise, then, that M. Night Shyamalan, among others, produced this very bad film? How is it that this film was directed by Celine Held and Logan George? How can two people agree to make such a mess? Only pseudo nerds will find this film brilliant, but I was bored stiff! Some rare TV films are more effective.

I found it really rubbish. I don’t understand why this film is rated so highly on some websites. When I read the synopsis, I thought it was going to be fun to watch, but in fact nothing happens for an hour and a half. It’s just images of people lost in the forest around the lake. When you start to realise that there’s a space-time rift, it gets even longer and more ridiculous. I really feel I’ve wasted my time.

Yes, Caddo Lake once again takes on the theme of time travel and time loops. A concept that has become so commonplace in Anglo-Saxon cinema that it loses its originality. Although the script is less oppressive than other similar films, the omnipresence of this universe gives a feeling of exhaustion. Perhaps it’s time to put this idea to one side: the repetition of this type of story becomes tiresome, even disturbing, and this film doesn’t offer anything new to justify coming back to it.

The story seems almost doomed to follow predictable patterns and loses all capacity to surprise. For viewers already fed up with the concept, Caddo Lake merely underlines the breathlessness of this kind of plot.

Please don’t watch this piece of rubbish! That is, unless you love all things bad, of course.