A whiff of Hitchcock lingers around Echo Valley, which follows a grieving, financially strapped horse trainer (Julianne Moore) who encounters more turmoil when her troubled daughter (Sydney Sweeney) shows up one night, equivocating about why she’s covered in blood. The most interesting elements—and the Hitchcockiest—lie in the morally conflicted way this mother responds. Moore is sturdy, if not able to plumb the murky depths allowed by something like May December, while Sweeney is fantastically fierce as a kid you can’t trust for a moment. (The fact that her character is addicted to drugs limits the performance a bit, in that it takes a degree of moral agency out of her hands.) Unfortunately, screenwriter Brad Ingelsby builds to a ludicrous plot twist for the climax. And it’s no insult, though still true, to say that director Michael Pearce doesn’t quite have the Hitchcockian filmmaking chops to turn the silly into something sublime.
(9/19/2025)
