Echo Valley

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://fandomwire.com/echo-valley-review/ "Echo Valley is an effective thriller that blends emotional and narrative tension with strong performances and technical finesse. While it doesn't break the conventions of the genre or explore all of its central themes in depth, it offers enough atmosphere, twists, and intensity to merit attention. Michael Pearce once again proves himself to be a filmmaker attuned to human complexity, even when working within the limits of genre cinema. It may not be a memorable triumph as a whole, but it challenges the boundaries of love and morality through powerful turns by Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney, never losing the entertainment value needed to win over its target audience." Rating: B

Julianne Moore certainly pulls out many of the stops here, but sadly that’s not enough to keep this increasingly implausible family melodrama off the rocks. She (“Kate”) runs an equestrian centre thanks to a little largesse from her ex-husband (Kyle MacLachlan) but her heart isn’t in it after the recent death of her wife. Just to add to her miseries, their addict daughter “Claire” (Sydney Sweeney) arrives on her doorstep, swiftly followed by her violent junkie boyfriend (Edmund Donovan) and then by their even more aggressive dealer “Jackie” (Domnhall Gleeson) which kickstarts a series of events that test the mettle of “Kate” and her sympathetic friend “Leslie” (Fiona Shaw). The thing is with this, the story is just too preposterous to be believable and the clues for us watching are so bleedin’ obvious that it renders some of the choices made by the panic-stricken “Kate” borderline ludicrous. What wouldn’t we do for our child? Well I suppose that might be the thrust of the story, but this scenario and a really weak effort from Gleeson just don’t ring true enough to convince on any level as it builds to a conclusion that might have looked great in the script, but that had something of an unremarkable Agatha Christie mystery to it. It’s all about Moore showing she is a formidable actor but otherwise, this is instantly forgettable television fayre, sorry.

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Manuel São Bento

CinemaSerf