I’ll be honest: If I hear the phrase “Straight to Max” in the context of an original film, my expectations won’t be particularly high. Netflix does this sort of thing on such a scale that it’s bound to have a few hits (Rebel Ridge! Hit Man!), but I don’t really expect the same for Max. Enter Caddo Lake.

Somehow, Caddo Lake came out of nowhere and made it onto my list of the best films of 2024. I was looking for something to watch and came across it by chance, looked it up and saw that it had good reviews, a critic score of 81% and an audience score of 83%. That was enough for me and wow, I was impressed.

In the film, Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner, Taylor Swift’s All Too Well video) plays a man who recently lost his mother, and Eliza Scanlen (of the excellent Sharp Objects) plays a woman who constantly argues with her mother. In the small swamp town, eight-year-old Anna goes missing and everything falls into complete chaos when the search uncovers… strange things happening in the lake itself. In other words, this is not your usual lost child story.

At this point I basically have to stop going into detail. Really, one of the most enjoyable things about Caddo Lake is that for half the movie you don’t know what the hell is going on, not even what type This is actually the case in film. The reveal isn’t saved for the end, but rather halfway through and even when you have it Do Once you understand what’s happening, things escalate quickly and you end up with an extraordinary, brilliant film that really comes out of nowhere. I was particularly impressed by co-stars O’Brien and Scanlen, and Servant’s Lauren Ambrose is also excellent here. Given the nature of the film, it should also come as no surprise that it was produced by none other than M. Night Shyamalan.

I would like to write a separate spoiler article discussing the film and particularly its ending, but I’ll leave that for another day. I really just want to recommend it as something to watch during what I would describe as the relative dead time in home video streaming at the moment. It actually reminds me of A Quiet Place: Day One, a film that I had no expectations of, but which also ended up surprising me and becoming one of my favorites of the year. I hope Caddo Lake can do the same for you. Let me know what you think when you see it.

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