'Echo Valley' is a pale copy of better thrillers

Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney are a toxic mother-daughter duo

Julianne Moore attempts to burn up the screen in Apple TV+’s “Echo Valley.”

Can a movie look too good? That thought came to me again and again while watching the Apple TV+ film “Echo Valley,” which director Michael Pearce and cinematographer Benjamin Cracun fill with beautifully composed shots, unexpected angles, and dreamlike imagery. All of it will look great on your OLED 4K.

The only problem is that “Echo Valley” aspires to be a prestige crime thriller, full of desperate people doing desperate things. If it all looks too lyrical and pretty, it runs the risk of draining the tension out of the film. “Echo Valley” can’t decide whether it wants to emphasize its character drama or its genre conventions, and ends up stranded somewhere in the middle.

The movie does feature an effectively raw lead performance by Julianne Moore as Kate Garretson, the owner of the Pennsylvania horse farm that gives the film its name. You can tell the farm was at one point a dream of Kate’s, but now it’s become a burden, and she can barely get out of bed in the morning. Still grieving the unexpected death of her partner, she’s neglected the farm, which is slowly spiraling into bankruptcy.

The one ray of light in her life is her daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney), which tells you how bad things are for Kate. Claire is a manipulative junkie who has been in and out of rehab, but Kate welcomes her with open arms every time she comes to visit, hopeful that this time Claire is serious about getting clean and going straight. The best scenes in “Echo Valley” are between Moore and Sweeney, as mother tries to see how far she can push her daughter without pushing her away, and daughter uses her mother’s best intentions against her.

But, alas, the plot kicks in. After another long absence, Claire shows up on Kate’s doorstep covered in blood not her own, and begs her mother for help. Kate agrees, allowing herself to get pulled into Claire’s criminal world, including the scary drug dealer (Domhnall Gleeson) who claims Kate owes her money. I always associate Gleeson with nice-guy roles like in “About Time,” so it’s a little startling how well he can play a villain, in this case a rural criminal who is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.

At this point, I thought I pretty much knew where “Echo Valley” was going, but screenwriter Brad Inglesby (“Mare of Easttown”) throws in a mid-movie twist that I genuinely did not see coming. The only problem is that the twist makes the second half of “Echo Valley” a completely different movie than the first half, a much more conventional one. A lot of the tension that Moore and Sweeney had built together in the first half is largely wasted.

Pearce had much more success with his 2018 debut, “Beast” in infusing a genre narrative with psychologically rich characters. “Echo Valley” is a well-made movie with some strong performances, but as I found myself admiring the visual compositions rather than getting emotionally invested in the characters, I knew something wasn’t working.

“Echo Valley” is now playing on Apple TV+.