Echo Valley ****

Starring: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Fiona Shaw, Kyle MacLachlan, Edmund Donovan

Director: Michael Pearce

Country: USA

UK Distributor: Apple TV

Sometimes the key to a really gripping thriller is simply positioning a central dilemma that makes the audience really question what choice they would make. This is what underpins the new film from Michael Pearce (Beast, Encounter), a director who is really making a name for himself as an auteur in the making.

Julianne Moore (Still Alice, The Kids Are All Right) stars as Kate, a horse trainer living on an isolated farm whose wife died just months before. She relies on financial hand-outs from her reluctant ex-husband (MacLachlan – Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks), so when her drug-addicted daughter, Claire (Sweeney – Immaculate, Euphoria), arrives demanding money to pay a debt to a dealer (Gleeson – Ex Machina, Brooklyn), she tries to dole out some tough love and say no. But when this leads to a fight in which Claire’s boyfriend (Donovan – Civil War) is killed, Kate must decide what is actually the best way to help her daughter.

With Claire arriving in the middle of the night, drenched from a thunderstorm, hysterically crying with a body in her car, Kate is faced with the decision: let Claire deal with the consequences herself or dispose of the body and cover up the crime. The story revolves around the fall-out from this choice, especially as it begins to appear that all is not as it seems. With double-crossing characters and a sometimes deceptive narrative, this bears all the hallmarks of a classic thriller, with an unlikely hero and a really slimy villain. And in a film that centres around an incidentally lesbian protagonist, we’re also served a refreshing LGBT+ friendship, with Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve, Harry Potter) playing the best friend who helps Kate hatch her ambitious plan.

Moore is magnetic on screen, as usual, while Sweeney cements her status as Hollywood’s best young actress, playing the brattish Claire with real gusto. But the real hero, however, is the film’s director, who elegantly crafts stifling tension, balancing Kate’s grief with overwhelming impending dread. Its beautiful woodland location contrasts starkly with the criminal underworld that bleeds into it, while the lake that becomes a pivotal backdrop is both picturesque and threatening in equal measure. The cinematography is handsomely composed, the soundtrack anxiously tense and the editing jarringly harsh. This is the kind of psychological thriller that Hitchcock would be proud of.

The classic thriller is a genre that has struggled to find its place in the streaming-world, but this is a real success for Apple. It may be that its pacing is sometimes uneven and it doesn’t quite climb to the heights it could, but this is a beautifully composed thriller that won’t let up its grip until the credits roll.

UK Release: Out now to stream on Apple TV

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