‘Echo Valley' has a few too many ideas for one movie

Boston Globe

a day ago

The dynamic between Kate and Claire is clear even before Claire's arrival, when Kate has a heated argument with her wealthy lawyer ex-husband, Richard (
Most of that trouble falls on Claire's relationship with her volatile boyfriend Ryan Sinclair (Edmund Donovan), and in turn on Ryan's dealings with Jackie. Gleeson is a chilling presence from the moment Jackie arrives, calmly demanding the money that Ryan owes him, and not caring whom he has to threaten or harm in order to get it. Claire and Ryan skip town for a few days to avoid Jackie's wrath, but Claire returns home late one night, with blood on her clothes and a dead body that she says is Ryan's in the back of her car.
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Kate immediately springs into murder-coverup mode, going through the motions that have been depicted in countless thrillers, from cleaning the car to burning Claire's clothes to weighing the body down with cinderblocks and dumping it in a nearby lake. 'I took care of it. All of it,' Kate tells Claire, in the kind of ominously obvious foreshadowing that indicates to the audience that Kate did not actually take care of anything.
So of course, Jackie comes back demanding money, but the bigger surprise is what happens with Claire and what Kate does about it. Claire is such a deliberately grating character that it's a relief when Sweeney essentially disappears for the second half of the movie, and an even bigger relief when Kate finally seems to realize how toxic and cruel her daughter really is.
Faced with an unstable criminal making demands she can't meet, Kate turns to her resourceful best friend Leslie (
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With its muted color palette, measured pacing, and droning score, 'Echo Valley' sometimes comes off as a plodding drama about grief — not for the snotty, ungrateful Claire, but for the kind and patient Patty, who appears briefly in flashbacks, and in the requisite wedding video and old voicemails that Kate obsessively revisits. Director Michael Pearce explored similarly fraught familial relationships in his belabored 2021 drama 'Encounter,' and for a while 'Echo Valley' appears to be taking the same approach, turning potentially pulpy genre material into dour moralizing.
Then the story takes a turn, and while those heavy themes don't disappear, Pearce treats them with more energy and occasional playfulness. Kate and Leslie get drunk and dance around to silly pop songs and reminisce about their respective coming-out stories. Leslie is supportive and pragmatic, and she helps Kate channel her inner latter-day Liam Neeson when it comes to dealing with Jackie. Ingelsby is best known as the creator of '
Domhnall Gleeson.
Apple TV+
Moore remains an indomitable presence throughout Kate's emotional journey, but Gleeson (just a few weeks after playing a sleazy antagonist in another Apple TV+ original movie, 'Fountain of Youth') gives the most entertaining performance, playing up Jackie's gleeful sociopathy in a way that makes it easy to root for his downfall. Despite Sweeney's efforts, Claire's downfall is easy to root for, too, and Ingelsby and Pearce don't give her a smooth road to redemption. 'Echo Valley' travels a rough road as well, but it finds its footing when the time comes.
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ECHO VALLEY
Starring: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Kyle MacLachlan, Fiona Shaw. On Apple TV+