Warning: This article contains spoilers fromCaddo Lake.
“It was so arresting.”
The lake itself is the stuff of myth.
Dylan O’Brien and Eliza Scanlen in ‘Caddo Lake’.Max (2)
The deepest portion bears the nickname the Devil’s Elbow.
Some say it was formed by an asteroid colliding with the Earth.
Some say the land is the result of an earthquake.
The titular Caddo Lake of ‘Caddo Lake’.Max
Whatever the case, it’s a place where people disappear.
It’s also a relic of Prohibition.
A single house remains on an island where locals could travel by boat with beer and freely drink.
Diana Hopper as Cee, Dylan O’Brien as Paris in ‘Caddo Lake’.Max
“It’s haunted, of course,” Held remarks.
Something about the image of the swampy terrain called to them.
So Held and George, whoM.
Lauren Ambrose as Celeste in ‘Caddo Lake’.Max
“I was really captivated by this script,” Scanlen says over Zoom with O’Brien.
“The way it was structured was quite different to anything else I’d ever read.
Scanlen and O’Brien speak about that ending from different Zoom screens.
Ellie lives in the year 2022, while Paris is from 2003.
Max
“We’d always be passing ships,” O’Brien remarks of their filming schedules.
“We had a lot of conversations in between shooting, asking each other what they were doing.
We’d come home and be like, ‘How are you doing the ear thing?'”
The time hijinks make for one perplexing family tree.
The night Ellie’s stepsister vanished was the moment Anna became trapped in the year 1952.
Together, they have a single child: Paris.
Through her own journey bouncing between time periods, Ellie learns that Paris is her father.
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“You need both to make it sell a film effectively.
“The whole thing unravels at the end,” Held recalls of that treatment.
“It was so complex and ultimately not fulfilling as a cinematic machine.”
According to Held, that line became “a big unlock” for the filmmakers.
“It means more than just time travel.
It’s death; it’s everything.
That really affected us.
We wanted to build that last scene around that line.”
She tells him that they were always family.
“In production, Eric Lange ended up being such a big presence,” Held continues.
We ended up needing that scene with Ellie and Daniel to have that kind of closure.
“I remember us having conversations about performance and what certain scenes looked like.
The actor lived out of an RV Park about 35 minutes north of Shreveport, La.
The first thing they did was learn how to drive a skiff.
Bigger than that, the lake made quite an impression on him.
“I was just immediately captivated by the aesthetic of the lake and the sounds,” he says.
“I was just like, ‘Oh!
This already feels inherently cinematic in a way.’
Setting-wise, that’s a beautiful playground.
It was such a specific environment.
It’s such a specific culture and spirit and community, and you’re totally immersed in it.
That absolutely goes a long way in informing everything for you.”
Caddo Lakeis streaming now on Max.
