Review: Sydney Sweeney gives ‘Echo Valley' its extra spark

San Francisco Chronicle​

2 days ago

It's becoming clear by now that, despite what must be enormous temptation, Sydney Sweeney is intent on becoming an artist, not a pop-culture attraction.
Following her breakout role in the romcom, 'Anyone But You,' she has been testing herself with interesting choices in medium-budget movies, and even the superhero movie she made, ' Madame Web,' was interesting enough to bomb at the box office.
In 'Echo Valley' she signs on for the challenge of starring opposite Julianne Moore and holds her own. From a career-planning perspective, what's especially interesting is that Sweeney looks awful in it. She plays a heroin addict, and if this were your first Sydney Sweeney movie, you might assume that she always has a bad complexion and goes weeks without washing her hair.
'Echo Valley' is strong enough to grab and hold any viewer's attention, but it might particularly resonate with middle-aged parents of adult addicts. Moore plays Kate, who is recovering from her spouse's death while single handedly running a farm. It's hard, lonely work, for little money, and one night her daughter Claire (Sweeney) shows up, acting loving and swearing that she's sober, while incidentally mentioning that she needs another hand-out.
Kate exists in a low-grade fever of pain and grief, so of course when Claire arrives at her door, she wants to assume everything is all right, that her daughter has changed, and that the tens of thousands of dollars spent on rehab weren't wasted. For Moore, Kate is a very internal role. Aside from a friend (Fiona Shaw) who visits occasionally, Kate has no one she can be honest with. We know her pain from reading her eyes, and can only guess at her plans.
Throughout, director Michael Pearce lends the movie an ominous stillness, but it's a stillness often interrupted, and a lot happens in 'Echo Valley.' It's arranged as a series of escalating catastrophes, most of which come as a surprise, all of which make perfect sense in retrospect.
A mother-daughter scene, with Moore and Sweeney tearing into each other, is brutal and intense, and yet by the end of 'Echo Valley,' you'll look back on that scene as the good old days.
Brad Ingelsby, who wrote one of the better Liam Neeson action films, ' Run All Night ' (2015), consistently stays at least one step ahead of his audience, coming up with new and varied ways to make Kate's life a nightmare. Every time you think that things can't get worse, they do. In whatever direction she moves, Kate finds herself in a sinkhole.
Domhnall Gleeson has a supporting role as a drug dealer, whose blond good looks and superficially genial demeanor provide a cover for his depthless villainy. He's not just bad but interesting, because he seems intelligent, reachable and reasonable, but he's not any of those things.
'Echo Valley' is essentially Moore's movie, a portrait of a woman who has had more than her share of misery and who is underestimated by just about everyone who bothers to notice her. It's a performance that would benefit from a second viewing, because it's only after we know where the story is heading that we can fully appreciate the subtle ways in which Moore suggests Kate's inner monologue.
But Sweeney gives the movie its extra spark, its sense of occasion. Sweeney has something special, and 'Echo Valley' is a positive sign that, whatever Sweeney has, she's not coasting on it.