Echo Valley movie review: Julianne Moore wasted in overwrought addiction drama

You can see what happened here.

If a script from Brad Inglesby, the creator and writer of The Mare of Easttown, landed in the laps of big Hollywood names, of course they’re going to sign up. Not only did that HBO series capture the zeitgeist, it also won Kate Winslet an Emmy.

It goes a long way to explaining why Echo Valley has a truly impressive cast, led by Julianne Moore and with Sydney Sweeney, Fiona Shaw, Domhnall Gleeson and Kyle MacLachlan in supporting roles.

That ensemble, along with Inglesby, should have added up to a moody and suspenseful drama. Instead, it was an overwrought, frustrating and flat melodrama that you’ll struggle to complete.

Because it’s on streaming (Apple TV+), rather than a cinema release, there’s also no reason to finish it. It’s not like you’re already pot-committed after paying for that ticket. After the first screaming match between Moore and Sweeney’s strained mother-and-daughter, you’ll question why you turned this on.

That’s not to say the performances are bad, well, not all of them anyway. Moore is a class act who rarely puts a foot wrong, and here, as a grieving woman with a drug addict daughter, she draws on an audience’s empathy. But she’s not given much nuance to play.

It’s a lot of been here, done that, we’ve seen this before.

Set in Pennsylvania, Kate (Moore) runs a horse farm but has allowed it to fall into disrepair after the death of her partner Patty some months earlier. The roof is about to cave in and she goes to her ex-husband (MacLachlan) for the money to repair it.

Kate is low on funds because she’s spent everything on daughter Claire’s (Sweeney) rehab, but it hasn’t worked.

One night, Claire returns home, declaring she’s left her boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan) and threw his stuff into the river for good measure. Only, oops, that stuff included a stash of drugs that belonged to the fearsome dealer Jackie (Gleeson), who’s now looking for payment and his pound of flesh.

Kate is forced to intervene and do what she can to protect Claire, even though her daughter shows her no compassion or kindness.

It’s a worthy pursuit to create characters that are beyond flawed, as is the case with Claire, who at one point threatens to harm her mother’s dog Cooper during a heightened attempt to extort money Kate doesn’t have.

Of course addiction is a curse that happens to the whole family and not just the individual, but Claire is such a one-note character she struggles to connect with the audience.

We see few shades, not even through Kate’s perspective, so Claire becomes a difficult character to connect with, and Kate becomes distanced too because we get frustrated at her loyalty to Claire. Yes, she’s her mother, but that becomes an intellectual fact rather than an emotional argument.

In failing to establish why we should care about Claire, whose fate is supposed to be the driver of all of Kate’s actions, Echo Valley gives us little reason to keep sticking with it.

The parent-addict-child relationship is fertile ground for drama. Take, for example, Beautiful Boy with Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet – it wasn’t an amazing movie but there was richness in that dynamic, and those characters were decently developed.

Echo Valley gives audiences almost no context. Whereas the world-building in Mare of Easttown was as compelling as the mystery itself, this film could be anywhere and about anyone, even though it’s set in a similar part of the world.

By the time the film swerves into its third act, it becomes a more straight-up thriller and the more ludicrous it becomes, the more you’ll roll your eyes.

No thanks.

Rating: 2/5

Echo Valley is streaming on Apple TV+