Multiple perspectives, a mish-mash of characters and the sudden disappearance of a little girl are already ingredients for a complicated film — but when you throw time travel into the mix things become even more head-scratching.
Such is the case with Celine Held and Logan George's Caddo Lake, a drama/mystery/sci-fi that starts off simply enough before quickly plunging into the depths of impressive confusion.
So, let's have a go at breaking it down step by step. What's going on at Caddo Lake, what really happened to Anna, and how does time travel fit into the whole thing?
What's Caddo Lake about?
First, a recap. The movie follows two different characters who both live in the sprawling, titular Caddo Lake: Paris (Dylan O'Brien), a young man still obsessed with the sudden death of his mother after she suffered a strange seizure while driving him across a bridge; and Ellie (Eliza Scanlen) a student whose stepsister Anna (Caroline Falk) abruptly vanishes after a family dinner.
For a large chunk of the movie it's unclear how Paris and Ellie are connected, but they do share one thing in common: The discovery of a strange area in the lake that seems to be the source of long-extinct moths, wolves that no longer live in the area, and bizarre echoing noises. As they both soon realise, this area of the lake is actually a portal that allows people and animals to pass through time.
What's really happening at Caddo Lake?
Paris' obsession with his mother's illness – which he believes was never properly diagnosed – leads him to make an interesting discovery: Her seizures corresponded with periods of time when the local area was going through a drought.
This realisation becomes key when Paris discovers the lake's time portal, because it helps him understand that the portal only appears when these droughts are happening. In a nutshell, whenever the lake is suffering from a lack of water, a rift opens. We don't know exactly how or why this happens, but the implication is that the phenomenon is naturally occurring, possibly even a defence mechanism against the droughts.
"This place," says Ellie at the end of the film. "Nature made this place."
What happened to Anna?
The short answer is that Ellie's stepsister Anna gets lost in the past.
After Ellie abruptly leaves the family dinner in the present day, Anna tries to follow her in a motorboat — but instead of finding Ellie, she stumbles across the time portal. After Anna crosses this barrier she's found injured by Paris, who has just passed through the barrier in his own timeline (it's revealed later in the movie that Paris is living in Caddo Lake in 2003, around 20 years before Ellie and her family). Paris carries the injured Anna through the time barrier, emerging in the year 1952. He gets her to safety before travelling back through the portal, leaving Anna behind in the past.
Ellie later looks through old photographs and discovers a picture of Anna, the same age as she was when she went missing, at a local school in the year 1952. Her name is Anna Bennett in the present, but in the old photos and news clippings she's referred to as Anna Lang. Lang is not only Paris' surname, but also Ellie's registered surname. Wait, what?
How is everyone related, and how does it link to time travel?
This is where the complexity ramps up a notch. After being left in the year 1952, Anna grows up and lives a normal life. She has a son – yep, Paris – then dies in 1999 after a time travel-induced seizure causes her to crash her car off a bridge.
Later, in the year 2003, Paris is in an on-off relationship with a woman called Celeste (Diana Hopper) before he discovers the time portal. Unbeknownst to him he gets Celeste pregnant before travelling through the portal into the future, emerging in the year 2022 (this is the timeline where Anna has just gone missing and the search is still active). Paris ends up drowning in his attempt to get back to the portal before the water level rises again and seals it shut, and his story ends there. But Ellie, who travels back to 2003 in the portal before returning to the present, makes a shocking realisation: Paris is her missing father. Her mother Celeste (played by Lauren Ambrose in the 2022 timeline) believes he met someone else and ran off, telling Ellie she was approached by a strange woman who she had a fight with when Ellie was just a baby.
The twist? Ellie herself was the strange woman, encountering a younger version of her mother in the year 2003 after recognising her necklace.
In a nutshell, Anna isn't just Ellie's stepsister. She's also Paris' mother, and Ellie's grandmother.
