Kate (Julianne Moore) struggles to get out of bed, bracing as she slowly puts her feet on the ground before rushing off to the many daily chores needed to keep a horse stable up and running. Months earlier, her wife of only a few years died in an accident and Kate’s only daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney) continues to struggle with drug addiction, only intermittently surfacing when she needs a phone replaced or cash before disappearing again. This time, Kate allows herself to feel a little joy when her daughter is back, riding horses, and sharing her couch once again, but their peace does not last long. Soon, Claire’s equally troubled boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan) and slimy dealer Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson) show up demanding the drugs she accidentally got rid of in a fit of revenge against Ryan. Claire spirals out of control and tries to disappear with Ryan again, but after a few days, she returns alone with blood on her shirt that isn’t hers. Now Kate must decide how to help her daughter get rid of the body lying motionless in the backseat of her car.
Michael Pearce’s grim thriller “Echo Valley” is a melodramatic mess redeemed by the performances of the film’s exceptional cast. Written by Brad Ingelsby, the story crams in so much sadness within its first half that when it shifts into becoming a thriller the change is a most welcome one. It is almost punishingly bleak until then, forcing the viewer to brace for the daily impact of Kate’s life, watching her motherly devotion questioned or taken advantage of and see her struggle as she tries to put her life back together after an unexpected loss. Like Ingelsby’s hitmaker “Mare of Easttown,” the story follows two women trying to hold their lives together in the aftermath of a devastating loss. Pearce emphasizes the narrative’s somber notes through a dark and foreboding visual style and a color palette to match, with the help of director of photography Benjamin Kracun and a haunting thread of music running through the film like a creek on the edge of Kate’s farm, composed by Jed Kurzel.
Moore and Sweeney are easily the film’s brightest spots, and they are both electric together and apart. Moore turns in another brilliant, heartfelt performance as Kate, embodying the character’s grief and strength in equal measure. The film opens with Kate’s solo moments, introducing her world and backstory with layer by layer of tragedy, a sensation Moore embodies with heavy shoulders, downward cast eyes, and a resolved look on her face to face the day–most days anyway. Unfortunately, her only meeting with Kyle MacLachlan as her ex-husband and Claire’s dad is a brief one, but it reaffirms how alone she is in this situation. Kate reveals much more with a good girlfriend, Leslie (Fiona Shaw), with whom she shares a tender moment of reprieve in the onslaught of Claire’s escalating bad news.
Sweeney gives one of her most volatile performances in “Echo Valley,” vacillating between the docile good daughter looking to reconnect with her mom in order to manipulate her for money and an almost feral rage against Kate when Claire doesn’t get her way. These extremes can happen mid-scene, taking the audience and Kate off guard with her tempestuous, wrecking-ball intensity. Yet she can still enter the room for her next scene, looking like the scared little girl Kate has loved all her life. On a much more menacing level, Gleeson serves up a memorable performance as Jackie, a particularly foul character whose cocky and power-hungry persona overtakes almost everyone in his path.
It’s a shame “Echo Valley” never quite finds its footing until the end because it has so many promising qualities. Much in the vein of a movie like “Mildred Pierce,” the mother character in this film sacrifices so much for a child who won’t see everything she’s given up for them because they’re incapable (for one reason or another) of seeing their mother as anything more than a bank. Even knowing that their child won’t appreciate their latest sacrifice isn’t enough for these mothers to abandon them in their moment of need. This central conflict would have been more than enough to keep a character like Kate busy, but compounding her suffering for what feels like little dramatic payoff feels excessive, or at least it does in the short span of two hours versus a longer runway for a limited series where tragedies have a little more time to play out. Here, the waves keep crashing into Kate, whether she steadies herself in the morning or not, whether she sees her daughter or not, or tries to return to her riding lessons or not. We brace for impact alongside her and hold on as she dives through her grief and into the bright light outside.
