There’s nothing quite like a good swamp movie. When used correctly, a swamp can represent all sorts of things: mystery, danger, the power of nature … In Caddo Lake, a brain-melting sci-fi film starring Dylan O’Brien that hit Max last month, the wetlands symbolize all of the above and then some as multiple characters try to get to the root of some seriously-hard-to-explain events.
O’Brien plays Paris, whose work in the lake reignites questions about his mother’s death. Meanwhile, a teenage girl named Ellie (Eliza Scanlen) soon starts frantically looking for her younger sister, Anna, who goes missing after following her onto the lake after a family function gone wrong. As both Paris and Ellie wade around the swamp, they discover an unfathomable secret about their home.
M. Night Shyamalan produced Caddo Lake, so, naturally, the movie ends on an absolutely bananas twist — one that might leave you scratching your head and drawing out a family tree on your coffee table. Let’s unpack this one together, shall we?
So what is Caddo Lake about?
Basically, we have two different story lines unfolding at once: Paris’s and Ellie’s.
Paris is working on the lake when he steps into a strange spot that causes him to seize and temporarily lose his hearing — which further convinces him that his mother’s death in 1999 was not from natural causes. Back then, she drove off a bridge while having a seizure. Paris’s experience on the lake comes just after he promised his girlfriend that he’ll be less distant as they try to repair their relationship. So once again, he finds himself letting her down and fixating on solving the mystery.
Meanwhile, Ellie is trying to dig up her father’s death certificate because he has been missing so long that her mother, Celeste (Lauren Ambrose), should have received one. But Celeste’s relationship with her daughter is, um, well, fraught, to say the least, so when she finds Ellie digging around for the paper, she goes off on her, prompting Ellie to get back on her skiff and return to her friend’s house, where she’s been staying for weeks. Anna follows her out there and goes missing, prompting a search.
Later on, in a moment of rage, Celeste tells Ellie that her dad never went missing at all; he met someone else and ran off, which Celeste knows because she encountered the woman once at the store when Ellie was just a baby. Even though Celeste told the woman that her boyfriend had a newborn, Ellie’s father never came back. (Yes, this becomes important later.)
Oof. Okay, so Paris’s seizure thing sounds weird. Are there any other signs something is amiss on Caddo Lake?
There are all sorts of weird noises coming from the lake — like, clanging sounds — and Paris’s dog keeps barking at it for no reason.
Never a good sign.
And when Ellie first finds Anna, she’s no longer missing the tooth she’d lost just days before — it’s like it never fell out. Plus when Ellie first arrives at the function, she finds a bunch of kids playing with an alligator that’s been sliced in half.
Ew, what happened to it?
To answer that, we must first discuss the lake a little more. Caddo Lake is experiencing a drought, and Paris eventually pieces together that his mother’s seizures always seemed to align with dry seasons. It turns out that there’s a part of the lake that’s … wait for it … a portal people can walk through to travel in time.
What?
Turns out Paris’s and Ellie’s timelines are actually not concurrent. Paris’s story happened in 2003, the year he went missing and never returned. Anna and Ellie’s timeline is set in 2022. We learn that both Paris and Anna stumbled through the time portal, and Paris found her. When he brings her to get help, he finds out it’s 1952. Then I guess he just leaves her there?
Wow. Helpful! So Anna is just stuck in 1952? Also, how the hell did they both stumble into the same year? Did Paris walk into 2022, pick up Anna, and then walk them both to 1952? Or did they just happen to both land in 1952?
That’s a great question, and I have no idea.
But, also, Anna doesn’t exactly just get stuck in 1952. You see, when Ellie inevitably discovers the portal, she warps into 2005 and sees Anna’s necklace hanging from the rearview mirror of a truck. (I should also note that Paris found the same necklace earlier, in 2003, and realized it was identical to … Well, just wait for it and I’ll tell you.)
Ellie breaks into the truck to take the necklace when the owner of the car storms out holding a baby and starts going off on her. It’s around this point in the movie when I realized the two redheads we’ve seen — one in each timeline — are, of course, obviously, the same person. Celeste is Paris’s girlfriend from the past.
WHAT? So that would make the baby …
Yep. Ellie is the girl her mother ran into that one day, and the baby Ellie sees in Celeste’s arms in 2005 is her.
But that would make Paris …
Yup. He’s Ellie’s father. He got Celeste pregnant in 2003, not long before he disappeared. Celeste’s mother shows her a missing-persons flyer to prove it.
That is crazy.
Just wait — it gets better. Ellie also finds out that Paris’s mother died just a few years ago, and her name was …
ANNA!
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Ellie does some sleuthing at the library in 2005 and finds Anna in a bunch of school pictures from across the decades. When Anna stumbled back in time, she didn’t stop living — she created a new life for herself and had a whole family.
So that makes Anna Ellie’s … paternal grandmother?
You’ve got it.
Why did she never tell anyone she time-traveled? Wouldn’t that be something you’d share?
I sure would. But who knows — maybe she tried and no one believed her. Or maybe she was afraid of becoming a government test subject if they did believe her. Or maybe she just liked the ’50s.
Why did Anna die in 1999 specifically?
I’ve been struggling with that one myself. I don’t know if there’s a significance to the year. I kind of wish she’d died in 2014, when she was supposed to be born on her “real” timeline. (If Anna is 8 years old in 2022, that would mean she was born in 2014.) But, really, any way you slice it, timeline logic is always going to be shaky.
Right. Actually, speaking of slicing, can we go back to the alligator? What happened there?
Oh, right! So the time portal works only when the water is low. Whenever the water comes back up, it closes. I’m guessing the alligator was halfway through the portal when it closed and got bisected.
What a horrible way to go.
This actually does become important for our ending, though: In the present (2022), police detain Paris after they find him with missing Anna’s boat. He breaks free and is hell-bent on getting back to 2003, to his family. Unfortunately, the old crumbling dam by the lake finally breaks, flooding the area with water. We find out from a newscast that Paris drowned there.
Okay, that’s a really horrible way to go.
But I guess the good news is that Ellie does make it back, and she returns with a newfound sense of connection to her family, biological and otherwise. Also, while running from police, Paris steals Celeste and her husband Daniel’s car, so when Ellie tells her everything that happened, she’s more inclined to believe her.
I guess that’s something. Resolution between mother and daughter is always nice.
It’s cathartic. And that’s basically it. The moral of the story is never wander into a swamp again.