ECHO VALLEY - Mark Reviews Movies

Echo Valley, Apple TV+

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 12, 2025

Without saying too much about the specifics, the final dramatic beat of Echo Valley is an ambiguous one. The plot has resolved the way it does, and we're left with the characters who have become caught up in it. This is a moment that should leave us with questions about what these characters, especially one of them, will do, but instead, whatever choice screenwriter Brad Ingelsby presents with that open-ended finale feels like a false one.

That sense is partly because the plot beforehand becomes so outlandish and is filled with so many awful acts that it would seem there's no turning back or returning from them. It's also, though, because these characters, whose lives and relationships feel so understandably thorny in the first act of this story, have become so much less once the machinations around them start moving.

The characters here, particularly our protagonist, have to be defined by what they do and why they do it, or else, the entire increasingly silly game being played by Ingelsby's screenplay would collapse. There's little room for development, let alone any sense of growth, for these characters as soon as a dead body needs to be dealt with in this story.

Before the body arrives, however, Ingelsby and director Michael Pearce put us right in the middle of a difficult—to put it mildly—mother-daughter relationship. It's more compelling and stressful than any of the thriller elements that eventually emerge.

The mother is Kate (Julianne Moore), a rancher who's still grieving the unexpected death of her wife. In mourning, Kate has trouble getting out of bed each day, and she has let her sole source of income, giving horseback-riding lessons, fall by the wayside. She spends her days doing routine chores while listening to assorted voice messages her late wife left her, but when the barn roof looks close to collapsing, Kate realizes she needs to get back to her life. Her ex-husband (played by Kyle MacLachlan) tells Kate that the check he's writing to repair the roof is the last bit of money he's going to be putting into the ranch, after all.

With that settled, Kate receives a visitor. It's her daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney), who comes with a big smile and stories of friends and questions about what her mother has been doing. Everything seems fine, except that Claire has a past with substance abuse, and while the daughter says she's currently clean after cutting short a stay in a rehab facility, the sudden arrival of her boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan), whose stuff she stole after they had a fight, makes Kate question all of that. He's looking for about $10,000 worth of drugs that were with the things Claire took, and whether she intentionally stole them or accidentally disposed of them, Ryan and Claire are on the hook for either the drugs or the cash.

What's important to know about our protagonist—because pretty much every character, including Kate herself, says it at least once—is that she'll do anything for her daughter. That hasn't changed after the repeated failed attempts at rehab. It doesn't change when Kate realizes Claire is caught up in this drug deal or when Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson), the dealer, shows up at the ranch demanding money.

It won't change when Claire threatens to steal her mother's beloved dog if Kate doesn't write her a check. The true nature of Kate's determination to help will certainly reveal itself when Claire returns with a dead body wrapped up in a sleeping bag.

Again, the movie, which is creates such an uncomfortable and desperate air about this mother and this daughter with only believable situations and performances, loses its way from that point. The rest of the story becomes about what Kate does to help Claire with the body (including a fake-out of a suspense beat involving suddenly-appearing-and-disappearing teenagers), how Claire (who disappears from the movie as a sign that the relationship really doesn't matter once it has been established) repays that unthinkable favor, and how Jackie now wanting even more money because of the mess that has been made and perpetuated by a lot of lies and illegal activities.

Beyond the fact that this convoluted plotting isn't nearly as intriguing as the relationship at its early center, the movie can barely stay consistent about its characters or its game. Kate, for example, is smart enough to know that a cellphone's location can be traced, but she's pretty quick to speak freely and openly about what has transpired to her best friend Leslie (Fiona Shaw). For people with a deep and dark secret, everyone here, indeed, seems almost eager to explain in precise detail what they have done and what they plan to do. That becomes partly some misdirection on Ingelsby's part, but it's mostly a reminder that these characters have ceased to be people and have become pawns in the unfolding plot.

Moore's performance does ground a lot of this more than it should, but that's just another unfortunate reminder of what Echo Valley loses once it becomes a thriller. The question at the end of the movie isn't one to vaguely consider but one that would have been better served as the core of this story.

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