Echo Valley: a 'twisty modern noir' starring Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney

Posy Sterling makes Molly an 'empathetic presence'

(Image credit: FlixPix / Alamy)

As Steven Soderbergh observed recently, Hollywood has largely given up on serious movie making, said Kevin Maher in The Times. Hooray, then, for "Echo Valley", a "twisty modern noir" that marks the return of "American cinema for grown-ups". It is a film for our time, "addressing the cost-of-living crisis with a character whose lavish dreams have come back to bite her": this is Kate (Julianne Moore), a horse trainer who is grieving the death of her wife and struggling to maintain her idyllic farm in Pennsylvania. She adores her daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney), but she is a spoiled drug addict whose failed stints in rehab have bled her mother dry.

Trouble starts when Claire shows up one night asking for help, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. She owes money to a drug dealer (Domhnall Gleeson) and her mother complies. But when Claire then comes back a few days later, saying she has killed her boyfriend during an argument, and has his body stashed in the car, Kate must decide just "how far she will go to protect her daughter". There is some enjoyable and creepy stuff involving a lake, but after that, the plot becomes increasingly implausible.

Well, you could sniff at the film, from British director Michael Pearce, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times, or you could just sit down and relish a thriller that has nods to Hitchcock's "Psycho", and enough twists to keep you guessing to the end. At a time when most movies are either the "nth instalment" of a franchise or "fishing for an Oscar", we should rejoice in one like this, that seeks to entertain, while also offering "something to chew on".