Echo Valley, starring Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney, is scripted by Brad Ingelsby, a prolific writer who, by way of works like Mare Of Easttown, American Woman, and The Way Back, has displayed a touch for original, redemptive stories rooted strongly in character. His latest effort, though, a listless drama less than the sum of its parts, has more the feeling of an uninspired adaptation of middling beach-read fiction.
Set in rural Pennsylvania, Echo Valley centers on Kate Garretson (Moore), who starts each day on her small farm listening to old voicemail messages from her late wife, whose death has left Kate detached from her sole remaining source of income, giving horse-riding lessons to local teens. She has people who care about her, including old friend Leslie (Fiona Shaw), but exists day-to-day in a bit of a haze.
In need of a roof repair, Kate begs $9,000 off of her ex-husband Richard (Kyle MacLachlan), with whom she shares a troubled adult daughter. Claire (Sweeney) has bounced in and out of rehab, struggling with addiction, and when she shows up at her mother’s house after a fight with her boyfriend, Kate at first thinks it’s just another typical argument.
In throwing away most of her boyfriend’s possessions, however, Claire has created a debt owed to Jackie Lyman (Domhnall Gleeson), a dangerous local drug dealer. Kate works to settle this account, but after Claire returns late one night, hysterical and dotted with blood that isn’t hers, Kate is forced to grapple with just how far she’ll go to help her daughter.
The film’s second and third acts—encompassing both a criminal cover-up and the obligatory unraveling of that kept secret, which presents in turn an even thornier complication—position it nominally as a thriller. But Echo Valley, directed by Michael Pearce (Beast, Encounter), apportions its screen time in odd ways. Without spoiling any specifics, these choices neither create effective misdirection nor dig down into relationship dynamics in a way that might radically deepen or alter the audience’s understanding of its main characters.
The result is a movie that doesn’t so much tap a hearty vein of mounting tension as just operate in a weird middle ground, emotionally speaking. Then, after dropping a reasonably compelling if not exactly shocking twist at the end of the second act, the back stretch of Echo Valley hinges on the implementation of an incredibly stupid plan.
There is an argument to be made for films in which not-very-smart characters make not-very-smart choices. (Dumb people deserve representation too.) But Echo Valley never once asks viewers to make that type of buy-in in this case.
So when a character, possessing leverage and attempting to use it, makes a completely arbitrary and incongruous choice about how to press their advantage, and then additionally introduces a random, strained need to “get out of town” for a bit, it’s so utterly baffling as to defy belief of it as an original scripted choice. It feels instead like the clunky plot device of a book adaptation that, in getting sanded down and transferred from one medium to another, is dutifully retained from the source material, but without a proper or convincing set-up.
To the extent Echo Valley sporadically connects or has some saving grace, it’s because of the efforts of its other players, behind but especially in front of the camera. Moore is incapable of giving a lazy or thoughtless performance, and she imbues Kate with a pained melancholy, connecting her grief over the loss of her wife—who was a connecting and stabilizing force with Claire—to a roiling, conflicted sense of obligation to her daughter. While the movie, by way of its voicemail messages, ably sets up this reading, Moore makes it real, and leaves the audience wishing the movie was differently framed. Sweeney, boasting a frazzled look, also leans into an unsympathetic character. She throws herself into Claire’s animalistic attack of her mother, and generally does a good job of communicating the volatility and shifting behavioral motivations that can be hallmarks of addiction.
On a technical level, Echo Valley generally acquits itself. Cinematographer Benjamin Kračun (The Substance) brings a full and busy toolkit to the proceedings, deploying high-angle set-ups, a few stylistic flashes, establishing drone shots, unusually timed slow-motion, and more conventional Steadicam work, the latter of which plants viewers right in the middle of confrontational scenes. This active search to visually elevate the material is resourceful and inquisitive, and it occasionally makes sequences more interesting in the moment. But it doesn’t convey any unifying aesthetic, and after a while one’s impression of it as a gambit more than anything else begins to harden.
Attempting to bend and fold these few solid components of Echo Valley into an orthodox genre frame (and then doing so quite poorly), any hope of spark or originality dissipates, leaving audiences trapped in the unmemorable basin of “second-screen” programming.
Director: Michael Pearce
Writer: Brad Ingelsby
Starring: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Edmund Donovan, Fiona Shaw, Kyle MacLachlan
Release Date: June 6, 2025; June 13, 2025 (Apple TV+)
