Sydney Sweeney And Julianne Moore's New Thriller, Echo Valley, Is Out Now – But Is It Worth Watching?
Two of the biggest stars of the moment, Julianne Moore ( Sirens ) and Sydney Sweeney ( Anyone But You ) star opposite each other in the new thriller Echo Valley, directed by Michael Pearce and written by Brad Ingelsby, which is available to stream on Apple TV+.
The story follows Kate Garrett (Moore), who works training horses on her southern Pennsylvania farm, when one night her daughter Claire (Sweeney) arrives at her door covered in blood that is not hers, and Kate has to decide what she is willing to do to protect her daughter. The film also stars Domhnall Gleeson, Kyle MacLachlan, and Fiona Shaw.
But with a disappointing 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, is Echo Valley worth watching? Here's what the critics think.
Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian gave the film two stars. 'The film gets mired in some very credulity-stretching stuff about what has to happen when bodies need to be recovered and the twisty finale is overwrought and silly,' he writes. 'The estimable cast all do their utmost but the overall effect is frustratingly implausible.'
However, Kevin Maher at The Times called it 'American cinema for adults', awarding Echo Valley four stars. 'It's slightly illogical, yes,' he put, 'but by then we're so invested in the film and so attached to the characters that it hardly matters.'
The Financial Times ' Danny Leigh also gave the film four stars. 'I'll take the side of the kind of film that is neither the nth instalment of a franchise, nor fishing for an Oscar, but simply seeks to entertain while also giving you something to chew on,' he reviewed. 'Echo Valley supplies just that.'
Elsewhere Gleeson's turn as the film's villain has won praise for his ability to 'successfully create a manipulative monster'. A film fan on X also loved the film writing, 'Went to an early preview screening of #echovalley tonight and I loved it. Julianne and Domnhall are fantastic, and the storyline has so many twists and turns I didn't expect.'
Another viewer posted, 'Sydney Sweeney in Echo Valley is magnificent in a visceral role. She displays an emotional intensity that captures the fragility and desperation of her character. Frankly, she is one of the best actresses around these days (though there was never any doubt).'
So, despite a poor review from The Guardian and a mixed response (so far) on Rotten Tomatoes, there are plenty of people who have thoroughly enjoyed the film and think the plot is gripping and well-crafted. That means the only way to decide if it's worth watching is to watch it yourself.
Echo Valley is available to stream on Apple TV+.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across entertainment, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things pop culture for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow with equal respect).
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
When did ‘feminist critique' of celebrities become nothing more than a snide telling-off?
Sabrina Carpenter was accused of dragging women back into an unenlightened past last week, as the controversial cover for her new album was met with (apparently) feminist furore. It's ironic, then, that the past is precisely where Carpenter's most outspoken critics could do with looking. It's clear that the general consensus is lurching grimly to the right when it comes to gender, and a new generation of young, female critics should be wary of falling into step. The debate about how we look at women, and what they want, risks limply missing the point. In the past few weeks, Sydney Sweeney has been chastised for selling sexy soap, and Addison Rae scolded for dancing in her underwear on stage. It's odd that the backlash has been so immense, given the celebration of Halina Reijn's Babygirl film just a few months ago. The SheEO Nicole Kidman slurping milk out of a saucer? Hot. Sweeney's dirty bathwater? Degrading and vapid. Seemingly, Kidman's age made the former radically feminist, and by extension, permissible in the eyes of the kink police. It is relevant that these debates now take place on online platforms. At their best, these spaces could provide a rare forum for popular culture to be taken seriously. From uses of the 'sexy virgin' trope to golden-age glam fantasies of whiteness, to the transformative influence of a queer audience, there are so many interesting things to say about women such as Carpenter, Sweeney and Rae, and how we are encouraged to read them. Instead, the conversation is dictated by sexist algorithms, financially rewarding those with the most extreme views. Liberation no longer brings clicks, and so to open TikTok is to fall headfirst into a sea of diatribes so puritanical they'd bring a tear to Oliver Cromwell's eye. None of this is to say that to criticise the pop girlies is blasphemy, but vitriolic chastisement is no substitute for meaningful critique. One TikTok user, priding herself on inspiring tellings of 'Herstory', asserts: 'Sabrina knows nothing … [she is] a disgrace to every woman that has ever lived.' Oddly, accounts like this have a fetishistic preference for girlbosses centuries dead, happy to build a brand around celebrating 'first' women (authors, chemists, queens, you name it), while throwing abuse at those making headlines today. If only, the inference usually seems to be, young women such as Carpenter could be as good at feminism as Jane Austen or Anne Boleyn. In fact, the real lessons are to be learned from histories a little more recent. These critiques seem largely ignorant of the 'sex wars' of the 1970s, which saw militant feminists such as Andrea Dworkin argue that whatever the context, pornographic imagery was hateful, exploitative and male. Against her were sex-positive feminists such as Angela Carter, attempting to think generously and with complexity about desire and domination in women's lives. If anyone could be bothered to dig it out, Carter's 1978 book The Sadeian Woman might turn the argument about Carpenter on its head. There, she historicises the 'good bad girl', 'blonde, buxom' with a 'childlike charm', suggesting the impossibility of writing about power and sex without writing about capitalism too. For Carter, pornographic imagery, playing on domination and subordination, wasn't to be straightforwardly judged or disregarded, but might instead be seen as 'a critique of current relations'. For all that the sex wars were aggressively fought, they were also full of rich argument, breadth and a long-lost awareness of economic forces. One thing Dworkin did get right was pornography's grim realities when constrained to a ruthless commercial sphere. When it comes to the multibillion-pound porn industry and the world of pop, those with the real power, much like the anonymous, suited man on the cover of Carpenter's album, rarely appear in frame. It's ironic, then, that in January, no less than the record producer Pete Waterman singled out Carpenter as a small blond symbol of sexism. She was, he claimed, setting women's rights back years, adding: 'If you're asking to be respected, don't come on in a G-string.' I'm not sure Carpenter needs to beg for respect from those cooped up in the retirement home for pop producers presumably still profiting from Kylie's hotpants, but those comments serve to remind us that little has changed when it comes to raking in the cash. That latter-day Pete Watermans are still those benefiting, in this case from charged debates about violence against women, is what socialist-feminists would have been pointing out decades ago, and precisely what we should be talking about today. If images of sexual subordination make some feminists uncomfortable, we should talk about that too. Instead, we're reverting to ironically paternalistic tellings off. Of course, it should come as little surprise to find the parameters of feminine sexuality being policed under the patronising pretence of concern for women's safety. It's precisely this logic that has been weaponised against transgender women for years. The result? A feminism that packs women into smaller and smaller boxes with every convenient transgression that comes along. We might ask questions about the unhappy marriage of capitalism and kink, but suggesting that women who want to experiment consensually with images of domination should in some way take the blame for male violence is dangerous, distracting and ignorant of history. Decades of work (against, for instance, the so-called 'rough sex defence') have been spent protecting women's right to express themselves sexually without fear of harm – it isn't 'choice feminism' to try to hold that ground. 'I can't escape your history,' sings Carpenter on a 2022 track. If only those attacking her felt the same way about the feminism they invoke, they might see what's really going on here. It's not so much a return to sexy pop that is restricting women as the censorious criticisms that pop's profit-driven branding seems perfectly calculated to provoke. Jennifer Jasmine White is a writer and academic
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
How Dua Lipa's lookalike sister Rina is desperate to be famous actress & how rivalry with star spurs her on
IT can't be easy growing up in the shadow of one of the hottest and most famous singers in the world. So it's little wonder that there's a touch of sibling rivalry between Dua Lipa and her younger sister, aspiring actress Rina. 13 13 13 A source close to the family says: 'Not many people know what it's like to have a pop superstar as an older sister. 'It has without a doubt got its perks but constantly being in her shadow would take its toll on anyone. But it's made her more determined than ever to be her own person.' Rina was just 16 when her sister hit the big time, and since then Dua has continued her meteoric rise, landing Vogue covers and Grammy awards aplenty, not to mention an equally gorgeous fiance in Brit actor Callum Turner. Behind the scenes though, Rina has been working just as hard - and is determined to make a name for herself, independent of Dua. As well as gracing the pages of Vogue, she's already got her own fan pages, a whopping 1 million Insta followers, and just last week was spotted rubbing shoulders with Sydney Sweeney at Miu Miu's London party. Growing up in London, then their parents' native Kosovo, which they moved to when she was six, Rina has said she "worshipped" Dua. The move meant the sisters and their brother Gjin formed an incredibly tight bond as they navigated life in another country. When Dua was 15, however, she begged her family to let her move back to the UK to embark on a singing career. It wasn't a decision they took lightly and while Dua was chasing her dreams, Rina's formative teenage years were spent mostly without her big sister around. 'She was young, but she was mature, she was ready. My parents didn't let her go easily — it was all done in a very controlled way," Rina has said of that time. 'She had to get back at certain times and she lived with a family friend. But it was hard. I missed her. She worked very, very hard. I really looked up to her for that and I do to this day.' Inside glam life of Dua Lipa's sister Rina as 'Gen Z It Girl' models with Game of Thrones star and parties with Hadids By the time the family had reunited in the UK, Dua was well on her way to fame - and Rina had her own plan. With jet black hair, an enviable figure, and distinctive, different-coloured eyes (one brown, and one blue), she signed a modelling contract while still in school and, like many Gen Zs, fell into influencing. 13 13 An insider said: 'Rina has of course always really admired her sister but has had times felt that pressure of having such a successful sibling. 'She has also made it clear she wants to do things off her own back - she is grateful for the opportunities that have come her way because of Dua but she believes she would have made it on her own.' Now, Rina - who attended the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School, which has made the likes of Billie Piper and Nicholas Hoult, on Saturdays - has her heart set on becoming a successful actress. When she was 18, she vowed: 'I think Rina will be everywhere. My plan is to go forward with my acting and do that and really focus on that. 'I feel like a big budget film is the dream and going to your premiere in Leicester Square, but also I think a series would be really fun.' 13 13 Fast forward to this year, and Rina has appeared in short films The End of Love and Midpoint, and is set to make her feature film debut in Expectations - a contemporary adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. 'Performing, being on stage, being in front of the camera — I knew that was what I wanted to do. I like to talk a lot," she has said. It's yet to be the glitzy career she had hoped for onscreen, but her popularity online is ever growing, though still falls well short of Dua's 87 million followers. Aspiring to the dizzy heights of fame enjoyed by Dua, Rina gushed: 'Dua's my biggest teacher and I'm so in awe of her work ethic.' Whether she manages to reach similar heights, though, is yet to be seen. 13
The Review Geek
13 hours ago
- The Review Geek
Smoke Episodes 1-2 Preview: Release Date, Time & Where To Watch
Smoke Smoke is a gritty crime drama set in the rain-soaked forests of the Pacific Northwest. Taron Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, an arson investigator with a haunted past and a flair for storytelling. He's working on a novel, but it's the fires that won't leave him alone. Alongside him though is Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett) who plays a sharp, no-nonsense detective and ex-Marine who doesn't tolerate ego or excuses. Together, they're pulled into a string of escalating fires that point to not just one—but two serial arsonists. As the pair dig deeper, personal baggage starts to surface. If you've been following this one, you may be curious to find out when the next episode is releasing. Well, wonder no more! Here is everything you need to know about Smoke Episodes 1-2, including its release date, time and where you can watch this. Where Can I Watch Smoke? Smoke is available to stream on AppleTV+. This is an exclusive original series, meaning this is the only place you're going to be able to watch this show. However, now that Apple is available as an extension on Amazon Prime Video, you can also get a subscription to AppleTV+ that way too! Smoke Episodes 1-2 Release Date Smoke episodes 1 and 2 will release together on Friday 27th June at approximately 12am (ET/PT) / 5am (GMT). Of course, it's really dependent on how quickly Apple upload new episodes. Expect this to be pretty close to the release time though. Smoke Episodes 1-2 are also available with subtitles from release, with the chapters scheduled to clock in at around 45 minutes long. How Many Episodes Will Smoke Have? Season 1 of Smoke is scheduled for 9 episodes, so we've got 7 more episodes to go after this one. Expect the story to continue developing, with plenty of drama still to come! Is There A Trailer For Smoke? There is indeed! You can find a trailer for Smoke Season 1 below: What do you hope to see as the series progresses? What's been your favorite moment of Smoke so far? Let us know in the comments below!
