Review: Echo Valley

Director:  Michael Pearce

Stars:  Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Julianne Moore

Coasting around a horse farm on the fringes of a rural lakeside community, Kate (Julianne Moore) hasn’t had the best time of it. Having recently lost her beloved wife in a sudden accident, she starts each day with both feet suspended over the bedroom floor contemplating whether she even has the momentum for the day. Unfortunately the same sense of the ambivalence is conjured throughout Michael Pearce’s new thriller for AppleTV, which manages the canny if thankless feat of being both consistently ridiculous and dull beyond belief.

In spite of her acres, Kate is effectively broke, having stalled the riding lessons she once used to keep herself afloat. She’s also worn through the generous pockets of her wealthy ex-husband Richard (Kyle MacLachlan – don’t get excited, he only has one scene). The need of a new roof for the barn could put her in dire straits. Still, from afar it looks like a comfortable life, certainly from the perspective of her junkie daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney), who rocks up out of the blue in search of a handout, drawing unsavoury connections into the proximity of Echo Valley Farm.

Events plod out of control as first Claire’s battered and bruised boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan) and then the pair’s unscrupulous dealer Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson) cast a pall to match the permanently overcast skies. When Claire arrives panicked and bloodied with a corpse bound up on the back seat of her car, Kate goes into damage control mode and disposes of it in the lake. Of course, this isn’t nearly the end of her woes.

Approaching her mid-60s at the time of writing, it’s heartening to see Moore still receiving meaty lead roles like this, perhaps indicating that studios are ready to contend with some of the criticisms levelled at them for forever focusing young. She’s in every scene here, and has the resources to play Kate as tough as she needs to. Still, Pearce and screenwriter Brad Ingelsby put the character through a lot of pain, both emotional and physical, and its hard not to come away finding it unscrupulously cruel. The way in which it accumulates also feels, sadly, quite rote. As dimly unsurprising as the supposed twists in the tale.

Kate shares something in common with Joan Crawford’s Mildred Pierce; blinded by love for a daughter who has no qualms scamming her for all she’s worth. Echo Valley flirts with other classic noirs. The illicit lakeside escapades of Leave Her to Heaven or the American gothic intrigue of The Night of the Hunter. They’re unflattering comparison points, though, as Pearce’s picture has nowhere near the impact of such classics. Maybe it’s the perpetual, downbeat victimisation of Kate, but it all feels bogged down despite there being precious few moments where it’s standing in place. 

The peripheral cast offer a mixed report. Sweeney – a clickbait capturing celeb who has also proven she has the chops to deserve attention – is only really present here for act one, but the character is shrill and one note, amounting to one of the thinnest in her repertoire. More impactful are Gleeson (who appears to be enjoying the opportunity to play a dirtbag like Jackie) and Fiona Shaw as Kate’s only friend Jessie (though it takes a scene or two to get used to the accent choice). But seeing as not even Julianne Moore can rescue Echo Valley from a rut of tedium, these guests can only offer brief respite. 

Classist, meanspirited and lacking in the gumption that a corkscrewing rural thriller needs to keep itself alight, Echo Valley simply happens in front of you, matter-of-factly. Having earned so little investment from an audience, the decision to end on a (wholly predictable) dramatic cliffhanger achieves nothing but a further sense that nobody’s heart is in this thing. If Inglesby and Pearce had rolled up their sleeves and played out that final scene then maybe, belatedly, we might’ve had something.