Echo Valley
Julianne Moore excels as a divorcee and widow who will do anything for her wayward daughter.
Mother nature: Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney
Image courtesy of Altitude Film Distribution.
Kate Garrett lives on her own at Echo Valley Farm in Pennsylvania, feeding and exercising her horses and doing odd jobs around the stables. Both a divorcee and now a widow, Kate has only the horses to goad her out of her bed in the mornings. And then there’s Clare, her daughter, the only surviving love of her life. Then one evening Clare turns up out of the blue in something of a state. With few pleasantries, she asks to check her mother’s iPad, and then asks her for some money. Just like she always does. But Kate loves her daughter unconditionally and it is this unconditional love that her daughter weaponizes against her. The question is, how much sacrifice and compromise is a mother willing to give?
The title, much like the taut contours of Julianne Moore’s face, divulges little of what is to come. But with Julianne Moore in the driving seat, the set-up feels entirely real and Kate’s problems the stuff of nightmares. She’s just been given an estimate to fix the farm roof and the sound of nine thousand dollars freezes on her face. She just doesn’t have the money.
Echo Valley opens with Kate happily dreaming of sharing her bed with her late wife, Patty. Then she awakes, stares up at the portentous cracks in the ceiling and forces herself out of bed. For a long time the camera focuses on Kate’s profile as she assembles her thoughts, preparing to face the empty day ahead. She then remembers to breathe, exhales and drops her bare feet on the carpet beneath her. For a thriller, it’s a brave opening, but we are already in Kate’s headspace. We are on her side. On the soundtrack is the voicemail of Patty’s last few messages, valedictory love notes that Kate plays repeatedly on her earpods. A trip to visit her ex (Kyle MacLachlan) proves upsetting, although she does return with a cheque for $9,000. Then, as she slogs through her chores, she hears Clare (Sydney Sweeney) pull into the drive and her face lights up. Mother and daughter are reunited. But Clare is not well and there’s something she needs…
The scenarist Brad Ingelsby has quite a track record, with credits including Out of the Furnace, American Woman, The Way Back and HBO's Mare of Easttown. The director is the British Michael Pearce whose films include Beast and Encounter, and he just gets better and better. The power, though, lies is in the performances, with Julianne Moore lending her usual credibility in increasingly desperate circumstances, and Sydney Sweeney giving a career-best turn as the coquettish, manipulative and desperate Clare. However, it is the Irish Domhnall Gleeson and Fiona Shaw who are perhaps the most surprising, in roles we hardly associate with them, particularly Gleeson with his lank, long hair and charmless smile. As Pearce cranks up the suspense, the tension is almost unbearable, because Ingelsby and Moore have bequeathed us a woman who will do anything to fulfil her maternal duty, whatever the cost may be.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Fiona Shaw, Kyle MacLachlan, Domhnall Gleeson, Edmund Donovan, Albert Jones, Rebecca Creskoff, Jared Canfield, Melanie Nicholls-King, Katya Campbell, John Finn.
Dir Michael Pearce, Pro Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss, Brad Ingelsby and Kevin J. Walsh, Screenplay Brad Ingelsby, Ph Benjamin Kračun, Pro Des Keith P. Cunningham, Ed Maya Maffioli, Music Jed Kurzel, Costumes Olga Mill, Dialect coach Tim Monich.
Apple Studios/Scott Free Productions/Black Bicycle Entertainment/The Walsh Company-Altitude Film Distribution/Apple TV+.
104 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 13 June 2025. Cert. 15.
