“Sydney Sweeney beats up Julianne Moore” may sound like a joke, but, in fact, it’s the most heartbreaking scene in the new Apple TV+ original movie Echo Valley, which began streaming today.
Directed by Michael Pearce, with a screenplay written by Brad Ingelsby (known for writing the HBO series Mare of Easttown), Echo Valley tells the story of a woman named Kate (Moore) who is grieving the recent death of her wife and struggling to maintain their horse farm. To make matters worse, Kate is constantly bailing out her adult daughter, Claire (Sydney Sweeney), a drug addict who only shows up when she needs something.
Kate promised Claire’s father (Kyle MacLachlan) that she would stop enabling her daughter. So when Claire shows up with her drug dealer boyfriend, and demands Kate give her money for “camping supplies,” Kate refuses.
Things escalate quickly. Claire—sweating, crying, dirty, and clearly suffering from withdrawal—gets increasingly desperate and angry.
“Mom, I need money!” Claire screams.
“I don’t have any money!” Kate screams back. “It’s all gone toward getting you better, and clearly it hasn’t worked!”
Kate tries to leave the conversation, but Claire quickly follows. Kate locks herself in her room, slamming the door in Claire’s face.
Claire tries a different tactic. She screams to her boyfriend to get her mom’s dog, Cooper. She informs her mother that unless she gives Claire money, she will drive the dog far away and dump him, leaving him to starve to death.
Kate runs to protect Cooper. At this point, Claire begins to physically attack her mother. She screams profanities at her, and orders her to give up the dog. She claws and spits and goes red in the face. It’s Sweeney fully embracing her raw, animalistic, base instincts. And it is terrifying.
Claire does not hold back on her mother. She fights nasty, including biting and hair-pulling.
Kate doesn’t fight back, though she does cry out in pain when her daughter sinks her teeth into her flesh, and starts pulling on her hair, screaming that she is going to “pull all of your f–king disgusting hair out.”
Eventually, Claire’s boyfriend intervenes and pulls Claire away from her mother. But not before Claire brutally slams Kate’s head into the wall. She leaves her mother’s house screaming that Kate has no friends and no one loves her, except for Claire. Some way to treat your loved ones, huh? You’d think this would be the wake-up call that Moore’s character needed, but alas, her daughter has even more suffering in store for her poor mother.
But anyone who has ever had a loved one struggle with addiction with recognize the truth of this harrowing scene. It’s a nasty, violent disease that can turn even the best of us into nasty, violent people. It can even lead to daughters assaulting their own mothers.
Both Sweeney and Moore give their all in this scene. Sweeney delivers unbridled rage and desperation. Moore delivers a crushing, resigned sort of heartbreak. It seems unlikely Echo Valley will be on the awards radar this year—given its quiet streaming release and lack of festival premiere—but if it was, these two actors would have my vote for this scene alone. I’ll be thinking about it for years to come.