There’s something about watching someone brace for their day that tells you everything you need to know. That’s how Echo Valley begins—quietly, grimly, with Julianne Moore’s character Kate dragging herself out of bed, feet hitting the cold floor like a soldier preparing for yet another long, exhausting battle. The battlefield? A horse farm tucked deep in rural Pennsylvania, where pain is buried in the dirt and old wounds echo louder than hoofbeats.
Kate’s routine is a lonely one, filled with the everyday chores of stable life: feeding the horses, hauling hay, cleaning out stalls. But she’s not just running a farm—she’s holding together the shattered remains of her world. Just a few months ago, she lost her wife in a tragic accident, and her daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney) has been slipping in and out of her life like a ghost. Addiction has a way of taking people in pieces, and Claire has been in pieces for a while now. She pops up when she needs something—money, a phone, a place to crash—and vanishes just as quickly. But this time, things feel different. Claire’s back, riding again, smiling in flashes, curling up on the couch. And for a fleeting moment, Kate lets herself hope.
Of course, peace never lingers long in Echo Valley.
Enter Ryan (Edmund Donovan), Claire’s sketchy boyfriend, and Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson), a sleazy drug dealer with zero charm and plenty of menace. They come looking for drugs Claire flushed in a fit of anger—her revenge against Ryan—and things quickly spiral. Claire runs off again, but returns days later alone, blood on her shirt, fear in her eyes, and a body in the backseat of her car. She doesn’t say much, and she doesn’t have to. Kate is faced with a decision no parent should have to make: protect her daughter at any cost… or finally let her go.
Directed by Michael Pearce and written by Brad Ingelsby (of Mare of Easttown fame), Echo Valley is a brooding thriller with the soul of a slow-burning domestic drama. It’s a strange, sometimes jarring mix—melancholic to the point of exhaustion in the first half and then abruptly lurching into crime-thriller territory. The result is a film that can feel both overwrought and gripping, sometimes in the same scene.
There’s a lot of sadness packed into this movie’s 98-minute runtime. It starts heavy and stays heavy, layering grief on top of heartbreak on top of trauma. We see Kate’s grief worn plainly on her face: the weary eyes, the tired gait, the silence that seems to stretch between every word she says. Pearce and his cinematographer Benjamin Kracun emphasize this emotional load with muted tones, shadowy interiors, and a desaturated color palette that makes the world around Kate look as empty as she feels. Composer Jed Kurzel contributes an unsettling score that quietly creeps through the background like wind over a forgotten field—never too loud, but never letting you forget it’s there.
The storytelling is intimate, slow, and brutally focused on character. For a good stretch of the film, it feels less like a thriller and more like an emotional autopsy, dissecting Kate’s pain with surgical precision. And when the thriller finally kicks in—when blood shows up on Claire’s shirt and things go sideways—it’s almost a relief. Not because we want danger, but because we’ve spent so long holding our breath waiting for it.
At the heart of this film are two powerhouse performances. Julianne Moore has long been one of cinema’s best at portraying interior lives, and here she reminds us why. As Kate, she is a quiet force, all steel beneath the sorrow. She doesn’t yell, she doesn’t fall apart dramatically. She simmers. Her love for Claire is unwavering but not blind, and you can feel the weight of every choice she’s made—every compromise, every second chance—etched into her face.
And then there’s Sydney Sweeney, who absolutely tears through this movie like a storm. As Claire, she’s a complicated, combustible mix of desperation, anger, charm, and fear. One minute, she’s the vulnerable girl who just wants her mom’s love. The next, she’s a fireball of rage and manipulation. Sweeney navigates these extremes with a terrifying ease, flipping from tenderness to terror in a single breath. You never know what version of Claire you’re going to get, and that volatility gives the film its electric tension.
The supporting cast doesn’t get as much screen time, but they leave a mark. Kyle MacLachlan makes a brief appearance as Claire’s dad and Kate’s ex-husband, reminding us just how alone Kate really is. Fiona Shaw offers a few fleeting moments of warmth as Kate’s friend Leslie, who gives her someone to talk to that isn’t a horse. And then there’s Domhnall Gleeson, who fully commits to his role as Jackie, the kind of guy who makes your skin crawl even when he’s just standing still. He’s not cartoonishly evil—just the sort of person who thrives on fear and weakness, and knows exactly how to find both.
Thematically, Echo Valley treads familiar ground: the lengths a mother will go to for her child, the pain of watching someone you love self-destruct, and the moral compromises that come with unconditional love. It draws clear comparisons to Mare of Easttown, but also to classic maternal dramas like Mildred Pierce. In both, we see women sacrifice everything for children who can’t or won’t see them as more than a source of money, protection, or guilt.
But where Mildred Pierce unfolded across a long, winding journey of maternal devotion and betrayal, Echo Valley tries to cram it all into a two-hour frame. And that’s where it stumbles. The emotional heft is there, but it doesn’t always have room to breathe. The pacing feels off—rushing through moments that deserve more space and lingering too long in others. The bleakness, too, becomes a bit much. Misery is layered on so relentlessly that it starts to feel excessive, almost emotionally numbing rather than engaging.
That said, the film’s final act finds some footing. Once the thriller element fully kicks in, the stakes feel real, and the pace finally matches the intensity of the performances. We’re left with a story that asks big questions: What does loyalty mean when it’s no longer earned? How far is too far to protect your child? And at what point does love become a kind of self-destruction?
Pearce doesn’t offer easy answers. Instead, he lets the camera linger on Kate—bruised, battered, but still standing—and forces us to reckon with her choices. She’s a mother who’s been dealt a bad hand, again and again, but she keeps getting up. She doesn’t break. Not fully. And maybe that’s the film’s quiet message. That grief doesn’t end, it just changes shape. That love, even when it hurts, keeps us tethered. And that sometimes the only way out of the darkness is through it.
Echo Valley may not be a perfect film—it’s uneven, heavy-handed in places, and tries to do too much in too little time—but it is undeniably affecting. Thanks to its stellar cast and moody, meditative direction, it lingers long after the credits roll. It’s a film that bruises more than it entertains, but if you’re in the mood for something dark, thoughtful, and quietly devastating, this one is worth the ride.
Just don’t expect to leave unscathed.
