Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michael Pearce
Starring: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Fiona Shaw, Edmund Donovan, Albert Jones, Kyle
MacLachlan
British director Michael Pearce made an impressive debut with this
2017 Channel Islands-set thriller
Beast, helping to make a star of Jesse Buckley in the process. After an
underwhelming sci-fi sojourn with 2021's
Encounter, Pearce now returns to thriller territory with Echo Valley. If you've seen Max Ophuls' 1949 thriller
The Reckless Moment or its 2001 Tilda Swinton-starring
remake The Deep End, the premise of Echo Valley will prove familiar. Well,
the first half at least. In its second half
Echo Valley deviates off course, and it's at that point that
it runs into trouble.
Julianne Moore, who seems to be everywhere right now, plays Kate,
recently widowed when her wife was killed in an accident at the stables
they ran together. Struggling to run the farm alone, Kate has subsequently
run into money troubles, forced to beg her ex-husband (a cameoing
Kyle MacLachlan) for $10,000 to fix her roof.
A leaky roof proves the least of Kate's worries when her estranged junkie
daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney) shows up out of the blue, having
left her boyfriend, Ryan (Edmund Donovan), following an argument.
At first it seems Claire might be sober, but after a couple of relatively
peaceful days Claire shows up high as a kite demanding that her mother
write her a cheque. Having lost some drugs belonging to ruthless dealer
Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson), Claire and Ryan need to get as far away
as possible. Kate summons all of her willpower and refuses to give money
to Claire, who storms off in a huff.
A couple of nights later Claire returns in a distressed state. She tells
her mother that she accidentally killed Ryan during a heated argument.
Kate instantly decides to risk everything to help her daughter cover up
the killing. Claire has all too conveniently brought Ryan's body to her
mother's house, all wrapped up like a mummy. Just like the devoted moms of
The Reckless Moment and The Deep End, Kate sinks the body in a lake.
Of course, that's far from the end of Kate's trouble. Jackie shows up,
claiming to know what Kate did for her daughter, and he wants money to
keep quiet. There are various twists and turns, but the film's final act
strains credulity and relies on us believing Kate - who up to that point
has made every bad move possible - suddenly turns into a mastermind capable of
outsmarting a career criminal.
The further into thriller territory Echo Valley ventures,
the less interesting it becomes. It's far more successful as a drama about
a mother coming to terms with the fact that her daughter has become an
unrecognisable monster and may be past the point of salvation. The best
scenes see Moore and Sweeney share the screen. Sydney has never been
better, nailing the single-mindedness of a drug addict who is willing to
hurt their own mother for a fix. There are moments of conflict between
Kate and her damaged daughter that are so distressing they're difficult to
watch. Sydney's absence is felt as she exits the film for its formulaic
second half, but a cast-against-type Gleeson is surprisingly chilling as a
low level scuzzball. It's a shame that the film loses interest in its
characters as it focusses on laying out what it thinks is some clever
plotting, as the concluding twists collapse under the bare minimum of
scrutiny.
Echo Valley is on Apple TV+ from
June 13th.
