‘Echo Valley’ Review: Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney Star in Apple TV+’s Satisfyingly Tense Domestic Thriller

Ever since her partner Patty (Kristina Valada-Viars) died nine months ago, mornings have been hard for Kate Garretson (Julianne Moore), the bereaved protagonist of Michael Pearce’s gratifying domestic thriller Echo Valley. The horse rancher wakes up with visible sadness, which the camera (cinematography is by Benjamin Kracun) meditates on throughout the film. In the movie’s first moments, a startled Kate, emerging from the grips of a nightmare, opens her eyes and takes a deep breath before sitting up. Her feet dangle, then land with a thud on the delicate rug hugging the side of her bed. Kate’s routines are plagued by a similar heaviness. 

Patty’s unexpected death rocked Kate’s world, and she has been struggling to maintain the ranch, a sprawling tract of green foliage in Chester, Pennsylvania. Grief keeps Kate from teaching her usual riding lessons; she can barely afford to replace the roof of her barn. So when her daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney), an itinerant drug addict, shows up asking for money, Kate knows she must refuse — but a part of her can’t. 

Working from a compelling screenplay penned by Brad Ingelsby (Mare of Easttown), Pearce explores the depths of maternal devotion. The film’s intimate scope — emotional betrayals provide the real thrills here — as well as its melancholic atmosphere and solid performances make this a satisfying streamer option. Echo Valley indeed understands its premise and fulfills its obligations. The film takes some eyebrow-raising turns, indulging in twists that require suspending disbelief, but they don’t completely detract from an entertaining whole. Much of that is thanks to Pearce’s assured direction, which, anticipating when boredom might set in, experiments with mood in order to keep us guessing. 

As he proved in his previous films Beast and Encounter, Pearce has a knack for approaching familiar genres with a stylish retrofit. In Echo Valley, he turns Kate’s ranch, once a refuge from an asphyxiating life, into a space laden with the horrors of grief and desperation. Collaborating with Kracun (The Substance) and composer Jed Kurzel, Pearce favors muted colors, foreboding violins and robust emotions. Some of the most harrowing scenes involve Kate and Claire’s arguments about money and support. The volatility of their relationship is colored by mother and daughter’s respective sources of grief: Kate for her dead wife and Claire for the person she never became. Sweeney plays the substance-dependent young adult with some of the same nervous unpredictability her Euphoria co-star Zendaya brings to Rue, her character on that HBO drama. 

When we first meet Claire, she is a ball of jitters and half-truths. She returns to her mother’s ranch to check her messages because her boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan) broke her phone during one of their many fraught arguments. Thrilled to see her daughter, Kate capitulates to Claire’s every demand and rarely asks any follow-up questions. The two share tender moments before Claire asks her mother for money again. But this time Kate really doesn’t have any: Without steady clients, she’s been forced to borrow from her ex-husband (Kyle MacLachlan), a powerful lawyer in Philadelphia.

Claire, only concerned with her needs and the latest mess she’s found herself in, doesn’t believe her mom. She demands money to help Ryan pay back their dealer Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson, thrilling as a villain), a slippery and scarily clever figure. Kate and Claire end up in a ferocious fight that results in the daughter angrily driving away and the mother shaken to her core. The conflict is a jolting moment for Kate, and it opens up Moore’s performance — on the subtler side until this point — to more wrenching depths.

The real action doesn’t kick off until Claire returns to the farm with a body wrapped in plastic. She frantically relays a story about her and Ryan’s latest fight, which resulted in his death. Kate asks no questions and quickly leaps into action, disposing of the corpse and reviewing a fabricated story with Claire. Her dedication to her daughter eventually ensnares her in a conspiracy bigger than she could have imagined. Now, Kate must piece together what happened between Claire, Ryan and Jackie.

Meanwhile, she’s also navigating the undulations of her grief, which feels less piercing with the help of her close friend Leslie (Fiona Shaw). Intimate moments with Les — whether the two are dancing to Robyn in her living room or feeding the horses — offer necessary moments of respite for both Kate and the viewer. 

Echo Valley takes some genuinely gripping turns as well as a few unbelievable detours in its journey through Kate’s increasingly complicated life and relationship with her daughter. Even as the web gets sticky, Pearce maintains control of each thread with his steady direction. The handful of overly contrived moments disappoint, but don’t amount to an insurmountable betrayal, because Echo Valley delivers where it matters.