It's been a busy year for M. Night Shyamalan. This summer, he dropped the wildly entertaining (and wildly stupid) concert-set serial killer thriller “Trap,” starring Josh Hartnett and Shyamalan's daughter, Saleka. The “The Sixth Sense” director has several other projects in the works, but is also branching out as a producer, producing Ishana Shyamalan's “The Watchers” earlier this year and “Caddo Lake,” co-directed by Logan George and Celine Held, this month. It's the latter film that's climbing the streaming charts this week, thanks to the latest viewing data from FlixPatrol, putting it among the most-watched movies on HBO, which is home to streaming service Max.
According to the data service, “Caddo Lake” is currently the most popular movie on HBO, overtaking Gary Dauberman's long-awaited remake of “Los Salem.” and some 2024 theatrical releases including Will Smith and Martin Lawrence's “Bad Boys: Ride Or Die,” Mark Wahlberg's inspiring stray dog movie “Arthur The King” and Liam Hemsworth's action film “Land of Bad.” This snazzy Shyamalan-produced thriller has the advantage of only recently hitting the streamer – “Caddo Lake” was released on October 10, 2024 and did not get a theatrical release – but it also undoubtedly has what I like to call the “Dylan O's Advantage” Brien.”
You can't go wrong with Shyamalan, O'Brien and Eliza Scanlen
O'Brien is a great actor who has gained popularity since his breakout role on Teen Wolf. It's the actor's turn to play the “Maze Runner” trilogy. It may not be talked about enough these days, but these three films have collectively grossed almost a billion dollars at the worldwide box office (by the numbers) and are an underrated part of the 2010s dystopian film trend. After that, O'Brien slowed down and suffered a terrible accident while filming “The Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” but almost everything he's made since has still found a loyal (though not always large) audience.
In “Caddo Lake,” O'Brien stars as Paris, a man living in Texas who is still reeling from the loss of his mother. When a local girl's young stepsister (Eliza Scanlen, who returned to the HBO-adjacent project a few years ago after killing her off in “Sharp Objects”), Scanlen's Paris and Ellie go looking for her and discover that a strange swamp near their country home in Texas they hide their own secrets. While O'Brien is an underrated actor with a wide following, Shyamalan's connections to the film undoubtedly also give him broad appeal. The trailer for “Caddo Lake” shows that some truly strange things are happening in the titular body of water, and while it's not immediately clear whether the story will end on a purely sci-fi or metaphysical note, it's all intriguingly Shyamalan-esque nonetheless.
Interestingly, “Caddo Lake” marks one of the first times Shyamalan has worked as a producer on a project that he – or more recently one of his children – did not direct himself. In 2010, he produced the elevator horror film The Devil, directed by John Erick Dowdle, and after directing the pilot episode, he continued producing Chad Hodge's mystery series Wayward Pines. The director rarely gives his personal seal of approval to other people's projects in the form of a producer's credit, so his name means something to people who are hesitant to watch “Caddo Lake.” The film also seems to be the so-called fragment less polarizing than some of Shyamalan's works: it currently holds a 79% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes' critical aggregate.
“Caddo Lake” is now on Max.
