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.
Directed by: Michael Pearce
Starring: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Fiona Shaw, Edmund Donovan, Albert Jones, Kyle MacLachlan
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