Echo Valley feels like a workmanlike production that is tight, but the ludicrous revelations towards the end and the incessant power plays and scheming kill the enthusiasm.
Echo Valley review
Film: Echo Valley
Cast: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Kyle MacLachlan, Fiona Shaw, Edmund Donovan
Director: Michael Pearce
Rating: * *
Runtime: 104 min
This new thriller drama has Kate Garrettson (Julianne Moore), a horse riding instructor, living alone on her farm, mourning the recent death of her wife, whilst struggling with finances. In comes frequent runaway Claire (Sydney Sweeney), her drug-addled daughter, covered in blood, and her no-good boyfriend Ryan Sinclair (Edmund Donovan). Kate helps bury her daughter's secrets until Jackie Lawson (Domnhall Gleeson), Claire and Ryan’s sleazy dealer, seizes the opportunity for some fast cash through good ol’ blackmail.
Set against the lush hills of rural Pennsylvania, this movie is about survival. It’s a slow-burning unravelling of a mother who is forced to make choices that she otherwise wouldn’t have made.
Writer Brad Ingelsby and Director Pearce paint a vivid portrait of distress and depression, with Kate struggling with chores and bills to pay. Claire’s destructive ways only make it worse. Claire’s return to the family fold energises Kate for a bit, but the shadow of trouble is not far away. Kate is pulled back into Claire’s darkness, having to deal with Jackie, who is demanding repayment for his destroyed stash.
Echo Valley could have had more compelling character arcs, but the grittiness is lost in the effort to give Mommie dearest a long-suffering sympathetic arc - one who wants to make things right for her only child.
Fiona Shaw appears midway as Kate's friend Leslie Oliver, but there’s nothing much for her to do here. The narrative seems a bit simplistic, and composer Jed Kurzel’s score and cinematographer Benjamin Kračun's camera movement fail to give it the lift it needs. At a runtime of around 100 minutes, this workmanlike production feels tight, but the ludicrous revelations towards the end and the incessant power plays and scheming kill the enthusiasm. Moore’s nuanced portrayal of Kate is the major silver lining here. The rest is just forgettable.
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