'Echo Valley' spoilers! Domhnall Gleeson deciphers that shocking ending
Spoiler alert! We're dishing on those gasp-inducing moments in the new Apple movie “Echo Valley.” If you haven’t watched yet, do so before you read on.
If you’ve watched “Echo Valley,” you know Julianne Moore is one bad mother.
In the winding thriller (streaming now on Apple TV+), Moore portrays Kate Garretson, a woman struggling to make it through the day, shouldering the recent loss of her wife and expenses of her farm (named Echo Valley) that are piling high. Kate’s also trying to balance loving her daughter, Claire (Sydney Sweeney), who has a substance use disorder, without enabling her.
Add to that Kate is now being threatened by dangerous dealer Jackie Lawson (Domhnall Gleeson) after Claire accidentally tossed his stash of drugs. (Claire, mad at her cheating boyfriend Ryan Sinclair, threw out his things, with Jackie's supply among them.)
“He's just somebody who is always looking for a victim,” Gleeson says of Jackie. “He has an amazing spidey sense for people he can take advantage of, and I think he enjoys that.”
In an effort to cover his debt to Jackie, Ryan (Edmund Donovan) begins dealing and adds fentanyl to the drugs to stretch them. Tragically, one customer overdoses. Claire runs to her mom for help covering up the death, telling Kate the body is Ryan’s and that she killed him in self-defense.
Kate, a prisoner of her unconditional love, takes the body that is wrapped from head to toe, and sinks it in a local lake. She’s stunned when she learns that the body isn’t Ryan’s, and Jackie returns to Echo Valley to take advantage of her vulnerability. He holds her hostage on the farm, demanding she pay him money to keep her dark secret.
Kate tells Jackie she’s broke but can give him insurance money if they burn down her barn and make it look like an accident. But it’s all a masterful ruse: Kate recovers the body from the lake and puts it in the barn, sets the fire with a flare and leaves evidence behind indicating arson. Since Jackie was staying in the barn, the cops suspect him.
Viewers see that Kate’s “not operating at full strength when we meet her, because she's in the midst of grief and her daughter is in this terrible place," says Gleeson. "What Jackie senses is a victim, somebody he can manipulate and work and get what he wants from. He underestimates her.”
And those who tune in likely won’t see Kate’s plan coming, Gleeson says. “There's something kind of amazing about the notion of underestimating someone and then the price you can pay for that.”
In the final moments of the film, Claire arrives at Kate’s doorstep with tears in her eyes. Neither speaks, and the screen fades to black leaving the viewer with a slew of unanswered questions: Is Claire clean? Does Kate let Claire inside? What happens next?
“I don't have a clue,” Gleeson says. “We don't know, and that's what makes it meaningful. We all hoped for one thing, and we worry it'll be the other. And that's the same as being alive. We're all hoping things will go a certain way and are worried it won't.”