Julianne Moore has the perfect face for pain: pale-skinned, fragile and with eyes that turn easily liquid. That’s fortunate, because Kate Garretson, Moore’s character in the gloomily uninvolving thriller “Echo Valley,” is dealing with so much misery she can barely get out of bed. Her wife has recently died, her horse farm is losing money, and her testy ex-husband (a single-scene cameo from Kyle MacLachlan) is tired of bailing her out.
That’s more than enough distress for any one character, but “Echo Valley” is just getting started. Enter Kate’s daughter, Claire (Sydney Sweeney), a scheming addict with an abusive boyfriend and multiple failed attempts at rehab. Claire is demanding money to solve a problem with her skeevy dealer (played, with calculating charisma, by Domhnall Gleeson), and Kate, a chronic enabler, seems eager to auction a kidney to help. Whenever these two are together, you want to shake one and throttle the other.
After a terrified Claire shows up one night, bloodstained and with a body stashed in her back seat, what began as a promising study of grief and emotional isolation sinks swiftly into a seamy crime caper. Touching scenes of Kate replaying her wife’s saved phone messages alternate with shrieking bouts of mother-daughter dysfunction, and warm moments between Kate and her best friend (the always stellar Fiona Shaw) give way to increasingly preposterous plot developments.
Battling downpours and an abundance of nighttime shadows, the cinematographer Benjamin Kracun adds a classy, coppery richness where he can. But “Echo Valley,” directed by Michael Pearce (whose 2018 feature debut, “Beast,” mingled equally dissonant themes with far greater dexterity), is ultimately undone by Brad Ingelsby’s distracted script. The most relatable being onscreen is the family dog, whose baffled expression at one point I am certain mirrored my own.
Echo Valley
Rated R for a needle in the neck and a corpse in the car. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+.
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