'Echo Valley' mostly sputters, never soars
Apple TV+
Lazy critics sometimes like to rave “A great time at the movies!” No one will say this about “Echo Valley.” It’s a bad time, and not worth it.
It’s yet another story where a good person has it rough, but this time writer Brad Ingelsby (“The Way Back,” “Out of the Furnace”) captures the depths and doesn’t convince beyond that. That person is Kate (Julianne Moore), who recently lost her wife and has been struggling with her daughter Claire’s (Sydney Sweeney) drug problem for longer than that. When Claire tossing her boyfriend’s (Edmund Donovan) bag, unaware of its contents, leads to one dead body and one very alive, very angry drug dealer (Domhnall Gleeson, having a rough year), Kate must be the one to hold it all together and, at the very least, save herself and maybe her farm and, well, Claire’s TBD.
Where movies like “Winter’s Bone” thrive on a sense of place, rich performances, and directorial vision, “Echo Valley” receives little personality from director Michael Pearce (“Encounter”) and rather shaky work from Sweeney, who’s been good (“Reality,” “The Voyeurs”) but just isn’t Lawrence. Moore does what she can, but this attempt at a grimy thriller is cliche, contrived, and predictable (anyone who doesn’t anticipate the last shot may be a cat watching a TV someone left on by accident) in all the places it needed to be daring and precise.
There are movies that provide comfort, ones that move the needle, and some that just pass the time. There are also the terrible efforts that inspire energy and anger. “Echo Valley” is none of the above, only a disposable and weak attempt to examine one parent’s resolve in the form of oppressive unhappiness and plotting not even the characters seem to believe.
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