Caddo Lake Filmmakers Talk Their Twisty Max Movie

Caddo Lake writer-directors Celine Held and Logan George are still pinching themselves over M. Night Shyamalan’s faith in their mind-bending second feature. 

Years ago, when Shyamalan was actively recruiting cinematographers for the third season of his Apple TV+ series Servant, he took a look at Held and George’s acclaimed short film called Caroline, but instead of just hiring their DP Lowell A. Meyer, he insisted on employing the entire team. When the married directing duo arrived at Shyamalan’s office to get the lay of the land and watch an early cut of Servant’s season three premiere, the NYU alums were both caught off guard when the Unbreakable filmmaker inquired about their second feature script that was then known as Vanishings.

“[Shyamalan] was like, ‘I’d love to read it.’ So we emailed it to him, thinking that he was just being nice, but he read it that weekend,” George tells The Hollywood Reporter. “He then had us back into his office the next day, and he talked about the movie like it was going to happen. And it did, which was very surreal.”

Held adds: “It felt like a prank.”

Coming off of two big-budget disappointments at the major studio level, Shyamalan decided to reset his career in 2014, opting to bet on himself. He then leveraged his home to make The Visit (2015), and he ultimately turned $5 million into a worldwide box office gross of nearly $100 million. Ever since then, he’s been self-financing all of his directorial and producorial projects via his production company Blinding Edge Pictures. Held and George’s Caddo Lake ended up being the first feature he’s financed outside of his own films. (The Watchers — the feature directorial debut of Shyamalan’s daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan — was released before Caddo Lake, but the latter went into production two years earlier.)

Besides financing, Held and George benefited enormously from Shyamalan and Blinding Edge’s active involvement throughout production and post-production. Eventually, they even moved into a guest house at Shyamalan’s Ravenwood estate so that they could fine-tune the film together.

“[Shyamalan] would come in for hours at a time to watch what we were editing and give notes,” George says. “We didn’t know what to expect in terms of how much time he could give, because he was working on a million projects at the time, but we were just blown away by how involved he was and how thoughtful and articulate he was at being able to diagnose problems in an edit. As filmmakers, we could not have been more supported throughout the process.”

They also received some valuable tough love during their highly physical shoot on Caddo Lake, which resides on the border between Texas and Louisiana.

“One day, Logan and I were driving in the car, and Night called and said, ‘You didn’t get that scene,’” Held recalls. “And we were like, ‘Oh my God, you’ve seen through us. We thought we could solve it in the edit.’ So we did a few reshoots during production to save that [scene].”

In the week since its release, the well-received Caddo Lake quickly reigned atop the HBO and Max-related streaming charts, and if you’ve seen the film by now, then you understand why the twisty drama appealed to Shyamalan in the first place. The story follows Dylan O’Brien’s Paris and Eliza Scanlen’s Ellie, as they individually attempt to reconcile the respective losses of their loved ones. The film then takes a turn in the way that you’d expect and want from a Shyamalan-involved project.

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Held and George also discuss the many unique challenges they faced during production, as well as in post-production.

So M. Night Shyamalan got a hold of one of your shorts, Caroline (2018), and then he hired you and your DP, Lowell A. Meyer, on Servant. 

CELINE HELD Exactly. 

Once you established a successful collaboration, did you dust off this bonkers script that would likely appeal to Night’s sensibilities? 

LOGAN GEORGE We wrote this before working on Servant. When we were literally meeting Night for the first time in person, he had us come over to his production office to watch a rough cut of Servant season three’s first episode. We were going to be working on [episodes five and seven] of that season, and then he was like, “You guys have a feature you’re working on?” And we were like, “Yeah, we have this script.” And he was like, “I’d love to read it.” And we were like, “Cool.” So we emailed it to him, thinking that he was just being nice, but he read it that weekend. He then had us back into his office the next day, and he talked about the movie like it was going to happen. And it did, which was very surreal.

HELD It felt like a prank.

GEORGE Yeah, it was really bizarre. 

So it was just a coincidence that Caddo Lake was right in Night’s wheelhouse? 

GEORGE Yes, we believe in the idea of twists and revelations, and I do think this was a response to our first feature [Topside]. We wanted to make something that was more of a vehicle for genre.

HELD We wrote the film in May of 2020. We found a picture of Caddo Lake on Reddit, and we drove down [to the border between Texas and Louisiana] to write the film while living off the lake. So it just happened to be that in January, 2021, we were living in Philly and working on Servant.

How exactly did the conversation unfold to where Night said that he’d like to finance and produce it?

HELD That’s what he does. He finances all of his own stuff, and he doesn’t wait for studios to give him permission. When he brought us into his office, he wanted to keep working on the script. His producer, Ashwin [Rajan], read it too, and he said, “Ashwin just finished it. He was like, ‘I really like it, but I don’t understand it.’” We were too subtle in that fourth draft that he read. So he really worked with us all the way into post so that every moment is one-to-one with the audience and that we weren’t allowing our viewer to disengage. The moment they’re like, “Oh, I don’t get it,” they step back, they stop caring and they’re not as involved as the viewer should be. So that was the biggest thing that we worked on with him, and for financing, that’s what [Blinding Edge] does. So when they said he wanted to come on board, financing was part of that package.

GEORGE It’s also the size of film that they would normally go out and make. It wasn’t too small or too big, and it was kismet how it all worked out. It’s crazy in so many ways.

Was Lauren Ambrose basically cast on the set of Servant? 

HELD & GEORGE (Laugh.)

HELD No, we sent it to her after. She then called us and was like, “You guys, what!? You were hiding this when you were directing Servant?” So she wasn’t [cast on set], but casting Lauren had repercussions for who we could cast in other roles, without giving too many things away. She was a really important part of the casting process, and once we had her, it opened up who we could cast in other roles. So we had to get her in there kind of early.

It’s fitting that you cast the star of the movie Babyteeth since baby teeth are a through-line in your work, as well. Did Night recommend Eliza Scanlen on the heels of his movie Old? 

HELD Eliza and Dylan were actually cast before we gave it to Night. 

That’s yet another coincidence. 

GEORGE Yeah, we had shared the script with both of them, and they were both down to do it. Was that part of the conversation [with Night] too?

HELD Yeah, we said we had just met with Eliza Scanlen and gave her our script.

GEORGE Yeah, so I think Eliza’s name was helpful.

HELD We’ve actually never told her that. We should give her credit.

GEORGE For sure.

There’s a famous meme of Charlie Day’s It’s Always Sunny character looking crazed in front of a conspiracy board with red string connecting all these disparate points. Is that what the two of you looked like throughout each phase of this movie? 

HELD & GEORGE (Laugh.)

HELD Yes! 

GEORGE We shared lots of spreadsheets with the crew and department heads so that they could keep it all in line.

HELD We also had a giant whiteboard [ahead of writing], and we built the whole thing out to where it made sense. And so we were like, “If we can translate this into a script, then maybe we have a movie.”

The spoiler sheet for this movie is one of the most extensive ones I’ve seen in a long time.

HELD & GEORGE (Laugh.)

And while I had a firm handle on everything, there was one wrinkle that I didn’t fully catch until my second watch. So, between spoilers and the ambition of the piece, did you always know you’d have a tough time marketing this? 

GEORGE I think we were aware of it in prep, but this is only our second feature, so we were sort of just writing with abandon. We were writing for the sake of telling a story that we were excited about, but yes, there’s so much groundwork that you have to lay for the payoffs that happen later. It’s also something that Night talked to us a lot about, honestly. It’s this idea of having cards up versus cards down, and you have to have a card up that is engaging to the audience and makes them excited to see the film. But you’re also keeping cards down for the actual experience of watching it.

HELD We are changed filmmakers after this experience. Night has taught us so much, and as we’re approaching these next things that we’re writing right now, all we’re thinking about is what cards are up and what cards are down. For Caddo, it’s tone. A lot of movies that do incredibly well are marketed based on tone. But for [Caddo] in particular, Night was in agreement about not wanting to give away that first twist, so we think that the watch of the movie is better for it.

Did you surprise him with the Sixth Sense t-shirt in the movie? Was he able to catch that on his own?

HELD That was a surprise.

GEORGE But I think we told him.

HELD Yeah, we had to tell him because I don’t think he saw it.

It is pretty quick, to be fair.

GEORGE Yeah, it is very quick. 

HELD I’m surprised you caught it.

I only caught it on my second watch so don’t give me too much credit.

GEORGE In the director’s cut, the first thing we presented to him was actually a different take where it’s even more obscured, so it evolved over the course of the edit to be the way that it’s featured now.

HELD That’s probably why he didn’t catch it on the first watch. When we told him, he laughed and laughed.

So much of this movie is filmed in and around this muddy, swamp-like lake, and I actually had to rewind a couple times because I kept thinking how brutal the shoot must have been. Were the conditions as rough as they seem?

HELD The dirt didn’t go away for months. (Laughs.) No, the crew itself was the best crew we’ve ever worked with and maybe ever will. Hopefully, we’ll all be able to come back together. So many of them are flying up from Louisiana and Texas to come to the premiere. That’s how close we all got. We spent 80 percent of the shoot in waders. I have a memory of our second AC. His name is Derrick [Gutierrez], but we call him Gooch. He would carry Eliza Scanlen on his back from one place to another because she didn’t have waders on. We were all living in cabins or in this little hotel just off the lake, and we got incredibly close. So as hard of a shoot as it was, it was made so much better by feeling like we were hanging out with friends all day.

GEORGE Yeah, it was a super unique experience, and some of these sets would change over the course of the day. You’re churning up the dirt and the mud as the crew is walking through it all, so these swamps would turn into mud baths by the time we would leave them. You then had to improvise in a lot of ways around that aspect and the weather, which was critical for how the story unfolds. So there was a lot of navigating around those aspects. We would take these small boats out to these very remote places, and you had to be really concrete about how much crew and equipment you could bring, so it made for a really intimate filming experience a lot of the time.

You wrapped in November of 2021, and in January of 2023, Night told me that you were finishing post on the movie. Did the labor stoppages slow everything down? 

HEL: Yes, it was the strikes, but I also had a baby.

Congrats!

HELD I actually just gave birth again.

Congrats again!

HELD & GEORGE (Laugh.)

Held: So the first baby was a bit of a stoppage, but fortunately, we have beautiful babies now. 

GEORGE And now it’ll be released in time for spooky season.

HELD Yeah, it was then delayed until this year because they wanted it to come out in October.

So you were dealing with baby teeth in your work before you had firsthand experience pulling your own children’s baby teeth.

HELD & GEORGE (Laugh.)

It’s only going to keep popping up in your work. 

HELD I know, it’s kind of the perfect framing device.

Did the two of you actually do post at Night’s Ravenwood estate?

GEORGE It was probably fifty-fifty. We were able to do our director’s cut in Brooklyn, but then there was a certain point where we moved into his guest house and we were just editing every day out of the production office. So he would come in for hours at a time to watch what we were editing and give notes. We didn’t know what to expect in terms of how much time he could give, because he was working on a million projects at the time, but we were just blown away by how involved he was and how thoughtful and articulate he was at being able to diagnose problems in an edit. Night and Blinding Edge were really, really remarkable. As filmmakers, we could not have been more supported throughout the process. In production, they would watch the dailies every day from Philly, and it allowed them to have this macro view of the project: “Make sure this performance is tracking across these scenes,” or, “You might’ve missed this moment.” So that was invaluable.

HELD There were days when Night would call and say, “You got that scene. You got that moment.” But, one day, Logan and I were driving in the car, and Night called and said, “You didn’t get that scene.” And we were like, “Oh my God, you’ve seen through us. We thought we could solve it in the edit.” It was a scene where we knew in the pit of our stomaches that we did not get the sunset, and we didn’t have time for another take. So we did a few reshoots during production to save that.

Did you take any breaks during Caddo’s post to see what the other Blinding Edge projects were up to, be it Knock at the Cabin or Servant or whatever else was going on at the time?

HELD We actually directed another episode of Servant during post.

GEORGE That was definitely a break.

HELD & GEORGE (Laugh.)

HELD So that was another thing that delayed Caddo, but we worked really hard on the edit. Rewriting such a complicated film during production was incredibly difficult, and when we then got to post, we were often left with a piece that doesn’t fit this puzzle. So that was why the edit process took maybe a little longer than it normally would.

When I think of your work, I think of handheld filmmaking that’s very intimate and personal. Servant, on the other hand, was very measured, deliberate and contained. While Caddo ultimately feels like your past work, did your experience on Servant still serve you well on this?

GEORGE Yeah, Servant was a completely different cinematic language and sandbox to play in, and we had so much fun. When we joined, two seasons had already been built to watch and understand how they had shot that show, and so we were able to embrace that. It was like using a completely different set of tools to tell a story, but you have the security of knowing how smart and incredible that show is in the way that it’s filmed. But Caddo was very much our own project, and from the way we decided to film and capture and frame it, those were our decisions that we made.

HELD When Ellie is inside the house and she sees [spoiler] outside the house, that is a oner. It was handheld, but we treated our cinematographer, Lowell, like he was a dolly. Lauren actually called him a ballerina for that specific shot. We did try to do that on Topside quite a bit too, but working on Servant, we sculpted even more of these complex handheld shots. We think we’ve reached peak cinematography. You can do anything with a camera now; you can put it anywhere. So to love this way of looking at the world through a handheld lens, it’s like, “Well, how can we sculpt handheld? What haven’t we quite seen with handheld yet?” So that’s maybe the way that Servant sculpted a bit of Caddo.

You two seem like you have no shortage of ideas, so, in a perfect world, what would you do next?

HELD We’ve found that it’s about location for us. We have all these stories and all these ideas, but it’s about finding the location, whether it’s the tunnel [in Topside] or this lake. So we have found our next location, and we’re writing it now.

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Caddo Lake is now streaming on Max.