Few of the films to come out this year will have a more unintentionally fitting title than “Echo Valley.” It sounds mysterious and potentially intriguing, though as you begin to look closer, you realize it’s only just an echo, a derivative knockoff of a whole host of radically different (and far better) movies that it tries to haphazardly squeeze together only to get woefully tangled up in itself. Even as it features some strong performances from acclaimed actors like Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, and Domhnall Gleeson, all are fighting a losing battle against a script that can’t settle on what movie it wants to be. 
Is this a more confined drama about a fraught relationship between a mother and daughter that will push each to a breaking point? Is it a twisty thriller about the cover-up of a death with much more going on than initially meets the eye? Or perhaps it is a more thoughtful character study about a woman trying to grieve the loss of a loved one? “Echo Valley” says yes to all of the above and then some, rendering each movie it shifts between shallow to the point of being silly, just as it plays everything with an oddly straight face. Like the body dumped into a lake, it all sinks to the bottom even as the actors do their best to keep their heads above water. 
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Written by “Mare of Easttown” scribe Brad Ingelsby, it all ostensibly centers on the fraying bond between mother Kate (Moore) and her daughter Claire (Sweeney). The matriarch is struggling to run a horse farm all by herself after a recent loss, the grief of which has made her stop giving lessons, and is soon faced with repairs that she doesn’t have the money for. When she goes seeking help from her ex-husband, played by the always great Kyle MacLachlan who is wasted in that he only gets a single scene, he tells her that he can’t keep supporting her and also gives her an earful about their daughter who he says is a drug addict that will use her to get whatever it is she wants.
When Claire shows up, the two settle into a pattern you feel has played out many times before. She tells her mother about how she has had a falling out with her boyfriend and now needs her mother to get her a new phone, which Kate does despite the hesitance you can see in Moore’s eyes. When it turns out that Claire unknowingly threw a duffel bag with $10,000 worth of heroin off a bridge in an attempt to get back at said boyfriend, Kate will now have to find a way to pay off the menacing drug dealer Jackie (Gleeson), who comes to the farm to threaten Claire. 
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If this sounds like it could be a whole movie just stopping there, it’s only the beginning of what leads to a death that Kate must hide so that Claire doesn’t go to jail. This is the trailer’s focus, but the film is dragged down by so much excess outside of it that you realize this is mostly the setup to another conflict. This ends up pushing Sweeney to the side and leaves Moore to carry on alone as her character must face down Jackie in scenes that are elevated by the two performances, almost enough to make you forget how perfunctory it all is.
All of the cast can make the most of rather clunky dialogue, including a fantastic Fiona Shaw, who is also underutilized in a thankless part as Kate’s friend. However, you never feel like you’re actually getting to see them grow and change throughout the film. While it gestures towards more profound questions about how Kate is struggling to both heal from the loss of a loved one (with flashbacks popping up here and there in a way that feels more obligatory than authentically moving), just as she holds close to her struggling daughter, it increasingly does very little with them. Instead, the film mostly fixates on busying itself with a glut of narrative developments that are so chaotic that they teeter right on the edge of being comical. 
This is all quite a shame, as director Michael Pearce is an interesting filmmaker whose 2017 feature debut “Beast” was a more slippery and well-crafted work that makes “Echo Valley” look that much worse by comparison. Pearce does have a good sense of how to direct actors and give the story something closer to genuine tension in how patient he can be in the tense dialogue scenes, though the story itself is too shaky for him to hold it together. By the time we reach the ending that sees things get turned on their head once again, whatever thrills it tries to find are drowned under the film’s inability to focus. It’s not the worst movie of the year by any means, proving to be well-acted and directed enough to make you wish the story was up to snuff. You may even remember brief fragments of it, especially when you see Gleeson embody the slimy character or Moore bring a steely determination to the part, though the rest of it will be an empty echo that fades away as time passes. 
“Echo Valley” is available to stream on Apple TV+ starting June 13.