At The Movies: Illogical twists in Echo Valley, David Cronenberg's daughter debuts with Humane

Straits Times

18-06-2025

At The Movies: Illogical twists in Echo Valley, David Cronenberg's daughter debuts with Humane
Echo Valley (M18)
104 minutes, streaming on Apple TV+
★★☆☆☆
The story: Kate (Julianne Moore) is a solitary divorcee running a horse ranch in Echo Valley in America's rural Pennsylvania, where her prodigal daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney) shows up hysterical late one night with a dead body in her car. She has, she claims, bashed in her boyfriend's (Edmund Donovan) head by accident during a spat.
How far will a parent go to protect her child? To answer the poser in the Apple TV+ thriller Echo Valley, Kate, without hesitation, goes to the local lake and disposes of the corpse.
A drug addict, Claire has furthermore unwittingly tossed out US$10,000 worth of heroin belonging to a dealer (Domhnall Gleeson) among her boyfriend's possessions. Kate, who cannot even afford her roof repair, has to somehow repay him or he will kill them both.
The depressed middle-ager, once married to a lawyer (Kyle MacLachlan), is mourning the death of her wife in a tragic accident. She cannot risk losing Claire too.
And so, it is one bad decision after another.
The same can be said of the story from Mare Of Easttown (2021) series creator Brad Ingelsby, directed by Bafta-winning British film-maker Michael Pearce of Beast (2017).
Beyond plot quirks such as Kate's bisexuality that does nothing to deepen her character, this study on unconditional maternal love takes illogical twists into a third-act crime melodrama once the dealer blackmails her for the murder.
He is a menacing villain. But the central relationship getting sidelined is between the exasperatingly acquiescent Kate and Sweeney's shrill, manipulative Claire, whose emotional betrayal is the most grievous violence.
Hot take: Moore and Sweeney are an intense double act in a movie that does not know what to do with them nor what it wants to be.
Humane (NC16)
93 minutes, streaming on Max
★★★☆☆
(From left) Jay Baruchel, Alanna Bale, Sebastian Chacon, Sirena Gulamgaus and Emily Hampshire in Humane.
PHOTO: MAX
The story: Mere months after an ecological collapse, world leaders are mandating euthanasia either voluntary or by conscription as a means to reduce the population. Those contributing to the planet-saving effort are valorised as 'heroes', and their next-of-kin are rewarded with a substantial payout.
Humane is directed by Canadian photographer Caitlin Cronenberg. Her dad, Canadian auteur David Cronenberg, is the progenitor of body-horror cinema, and her brother is film-maker Brandon Cronenberg of Infinity Pool (2023) and Antiviral (2012).
Nonetheless, her dystopian fable has no bodily mutations. The characters, just the way they are, are the horror in their greed, duplicity and selfishness.
A family dinner in a vaguely North American suburb implodes into a violent fight for survival when the wealthy patriarch's (Peter Gallagher) plan to join the suicide programme goes awry.
A creepily cheery Department of Citizen Strategy representative (Enrico Colantoni) arrives at the manor for the appointed 'cadaver procurement', and the four adult children have two hours to decide whom among themselves to sacrifice before the armed agents do the choosing for them.
The eldest (Jay Baruchel), an anthropologist, is a government propagandist. One sister (Emily Hampshire) is a snippy pharmaceutical executive under investigation for fraud. Another is a talentless actress (Alanna Bale) and the adopted sibling (Sebastian Chacon) is a recovering addict piano virtuoso.
Inside the house over a single night, they turn against one another with every sharp instrument available.
This is Caitlin Cronenberg's feature debut. It shows in the lack of both dramatic depth and visual flair, but the sociopolitical satire on class and privilege is blackly comic.
Hot take: The Cronenberg family business continues to make a killing.
Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.