So many streaming originals are hits because of their “turn your brain off” appeal. Sometimes it’s nice to sit down with a 100-minute movie and ride along to familiar genre beats. But sometimes your brain needs a little challenge, or even a total shock to the system, and it’s the latter that Max’s latest sci-fi thriller, Caddo Lake, is more than happy to supply.

The swampy mystery is nearly impossible to explain, even for those who’ve already seen it unfold. That shouldn’t come as a surprise if you recognize the team behind it: writer-directors Logan George and Celine Held are frequent collaborators with M. Night Shyamalan, who serves as producer. Caddo Lake banks on Shyamalan’s trademark twists and turns, crafting a tale as winding as the real-life bayou from which it borrows its name.

Earth got gobsmacked with a space rock more than three billion years ago, when bacteria reigned supreme. This space rock was 50 to 200 times larger than the infamous one that killed the dinosaur eons later, and yet, it seems the hefty collision wound up giving early life a boost.

The finding, which is detailed in a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, attempts to shed light on a mysterious chapter in our planet’s history. When life was just getting going on Earth, our planet was still in the middle of colossal bombardments. Somehow, this didn’t entirely wipe out life. That’s despite events like the new study’s subject, a meteorite called S2, that triggered a massive tsunami and boiled the oceans.

According to the paper, scientists estimate that giant impactors, which have diameters greater than 10 kilometers, “pummeled the Earth” at least every 15 million years at that time. Though now, of course, they don’t; it's been 66 million years since the Chicxulub meteor smashed into Earth and wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs.