Caddo Lake- A Spooky Season Review
M. Night Shyamalan rarely jumps on board as a producer, but when a directorial team he worked with on his Apple Plus show Servant has a great idea, the man jumps. I’ll be honest, you are in November, checking out a review of a film from October. I’m sure you’ve already seen this, but if you haven’t, it really does have this interesting twist which suffices as all the reason in the world that Shyamalan would want to produce. I actually watched this twice, because when the movie starts to shift, it is such a bold choice, I was so intrigued to see if it actually worked that I went back through.
I was even impressed by Dylan O’Brien in the lead. It didn’t feel like him, and he’s matured a lot. The audio description, while I can’t spoil anything, really has to navigate the elements of this film carefully, as you get what you need to know as you need to know it. It is a film that is partially fascinating, but also tremendously tedious.
the truth is, on first watch, I was bored until the film revealed its hand. i didn’t care about any of the main characters, and it felt like a film going nowhere that was destined to skip theatres. However, the twist here is pretty clever, and it makes it worth it for just that element. Some people like to see if they can predict an ending, and this will be a hard one for people looking for the end at the beginning.
But, ultimately, I’m not sure I need to revisit Caddo Lake. It’s something I’ve even changed a bit since doing my YouTube review, which I did after watching the film twice. Once you know the twist, the movie isn’t interesting. There’s a reason I’ve never revisited The Village, though I won’t say that doesn’t have a great ending. The movie itself dragged along, and considering what M. Night had made prior, it felt like a let down.
I’m curious to see how time will reflect on Caddo Lake, but a twist makes for a great one time watch, and even with that, you have to compel yourself to even get to that point, because the film is really slower than it needs to be.
Final Grade: C+
