Producer: Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss, Kevin J. Walsh and Brad Ingelsby   Director: Michael Pearce  Screenplay: Brad Ingelsby   Cast: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Fiona Shaw, Edmund Donovan, Albert Jones, Melanie Nicholls-King, Rebecca Creskoff, Kristina Valada-Viars and Kyle MacLachlan   Distributor: Apple TV+

Grade: C-

Julianne Moore is one of our finest actresses, but Michael Pearce’s “Echo Valley” isn’t worthy of her.  What starts out as a sensitive study of a troubled mother and her drug-addicted daughter turns into a ludicrous piece of claptrap masquerading as a thriller that even Moore can’t salvage, though she gives it a patina of respectability.

As the film written by Brad Ingelsby begins, Moore’s Kate Garrett is struggling to keep her horse ranch operating; the buildings need work she can’t afford, and with no one to help with the animals, she’s exhausted and forced to suspend her only source of income, classes in horsemanship for the children of parents whose horses she boards. 

As we will gradually learn, Kate’s a grieving widow.  Her wife Patty (Kristina Valada-Viars), the farmhand she fell in love with, leading to her divorce from Richard (Kyle MacLachlan), died in a tragic accident.  And her daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney) is a drug addict, in and out of rehab, who’s gone off with her sleazy boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan).

Though Richard reluctantly helps out with money to repair the barn’s roof, he insists that Kate consider selling the place—and that she finally agree to stop giving Claire cash whenever she shows up claiming to be clean.  Naturally when Claire does return, her mother can’t say no.  She takes Claire in, hoping they can be a family again.  Of course, that doesn’t happen.  Instead Claire runs off with Ryan once more, leaving Kate back in the doldrums, relieved only briefly  by intervention from her old friend Jessie (Fiona Shaw), who lives some distance away with her partner Joan (Melanie Nicholls-King).

Now the plot spins wildly into thriller territory.  Claire returns distraught, with a body in the back seat of her car.  The fact that it’s carefully wrapped up should immediately raise doubts about Claire’s explanation, since one must wonder how, in her hysterical state, she could have been so meticulous.  But that’s just the first of many implausibilities they script asks us to swallow without question.

Kate’s determination to protect her daughter leads her to desperate actions to get rid of the corpse.  That sets off a chain reaction as Claire disappears again and a shifty drug dealer named Jack (Domhnall Gleeson) appears at Kate’s door making threats and demands.  It would be unfair to writer Brad Ingelsby (whose mini-series “Mare of Easttown” proved him capable of better things) to reveal the twists he intends to surprise and enthrall viewers; suffice it to say that they include such varied elements as an insurance scam and even what might be called a kind-of resurrection.    

It’s not unfair, though, to note that after suggesting one downbeat denouement it all wraps up in a frenetic explanation of “what actually happened” that shifts matters into a far more upbeat mode.  Though a police detective (Albert Jones) is part of the mix, he doesn’t tells us what occurred, the way the cop did in another recent, overcomplicated thriller (“The Ruse”); director Michael Pearce opts instead to frame the revelations in a montage edited by Maya Maffiolo that moves very quickly in an effort to mute the unlikelihood of things having fallen so securely into place.  But the effect is just as silly here as it was in “The Ruse.”  Even worse, it’s capped by a final shot that conveniently ignores the moral ambiguity of the ending, positing instead an unearned “happily ever after.”

Whatever power the film has derives entirely from Moore’s committed performance; she invests her deeply flawed character with a traumatized intensity that makes palatable even the worst scenes—one in which she’s attacked and injected with drugs (nothing much follows from it, however) and another in which she has a nightmare, thrashes about in bed and winds up trapped in the sheets just like the corpse Claire had brought home.  You might not be convinced, however, that such a troubled woman would be capable of the cleverness she exhibits in the end. 

By contrast Sweeney gets to play basically two notes—Claire is either wacked out or pretending to be in control—and Gleeson just projects a smoothly menacing pose, except when he finds himself in a tough spot at the close.  Shaw is engaging as a dame always ready to help even at the cost of putting herself in danger and MacLachlan sells his single scene, while Donovan is convincingly spineless.  Keith P. Cunningham’s production design is pretty ordinary, but he and cinematographer Benjamin Kračun conjure up an impressively surrealistic barn-burning.  Jed Kurzel’s score is like one long musical moan, periodically interrupted by some energy in action sequences.

“Echo Valley” strands the always compelling Moore in a would-be thriller that collapses as decisively as Kate’s burning barn does. 

Producers: Paul Feig and Laura Fischer   Director: Paul Feig   Screenplay: Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis   Cast: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Michele Morrone, Elena Sofia Ricci, Elizabeth Perkins, Alex Newell, Taylor Ortega, Lorenzo de Moor, Aparna Nancherla, Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Max Malatesta, Anita Pititto, Ian Ho, Joshua Satine, Kelly McCormack, Jake Tapper and Allison Janey   Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios/Prime Video

Grade: C-

One had better enjoy the lovely Capri locations, lovingly shot by cinematographer John Schwartzman, and the equally gorgeous costumes for the stars designed by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus, because there’s precious else that “Another Simple Favor” has going for it.  In returning to their surprisingly successful 2018 comedy mystery, director Paul Feig and screenwriter Jessica Sharzer (joined now by Laeta Kalogridis) have saddled stars Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively with a script replete with contrived situations, obnoxious characters and witless dialogue.  No wonder they, and the supporting cast, come off so badly.

As the purportedly wacky sequel opens, Kendrick’s Stephanie Summers—now not just a vlogger but a true-crime author and detective–is being pressured by her exasperated agent Vicky (Alex Newell, torturously over-the-top) to up her game, while being pressed by her son Miles (Joshua Satine) to stop babying him.  Her book signing is rudely interrupted by Emily Nelson (Lively), just sprung from prison on appeal, whom Stephanie was instrumental in putting away—while also bedding Emily’s husband Sean Townsend (Henry Golding), a professor, when Emily was thought dead.

Using a variety of snarky references to their past relationship and threats, and bolstered by Vicky’s wild encouragement, Emily induces Stephanie to be maid of honor at her marriage to wealthy Dante Versano (Michele Morrone) in Capri, where Sean, now a perpetually angry drunk, and Nicky (Ian Ho), his and Emily’s son, will also be in attendance.  Also gracing the festivities are Dante’s disapproving mother Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci) and Matteo Bartolo (Lorenzo de Moor), from the mob family at war with the Versanos.  Emily’s maniacally religious mother Margaret (Elizabeth Perkins) is also on hand, along with her sister/attendant Linda (Allison Janey).  It’s important to remember that Emily was one of triplets originally named Faith, Hope and Charity (she was Hope).

Unsurprisingly, the wedding does not go smoothly.  Two murders—one of them a quite gruesome affair—occur, and Stephanie becomes a suspect, finally being placed under virtual house arrest by the bumbling investigating detective (Max Malatesta).  An equally bumbling FBI agent (Taylor Ortega) shows up shadowing Stephanie.  Portia decides to take matters into her own hands to discover the truth.  And a number of folks on the island turn out to be harboring secrets and lies.

There are occasional glimmers of amusement amid what becomes an extraordinarily tiresome, borderline incomprehensible omnishambles of twists, reversals and mixed identities that even goes so far as to include a comic torture scene and child endangerment.  (Editor Brent White tries to hold it all together, but messiness is unavoidable, and the result is way overlong at a full two hours.)   There’s a nice slapsticky turn, for example, from Anita Pititto as the hotel maid who helps Stephanie escape her room.  But virtually everyone else in the cast is badly used.  Kendrick’s usual effervescence is drowned in snark, Lively is reduced to smarmy brittleness, and Janey gives vent to her proclivity to scream.  But Golding gets the worst of it, saddled with a thoroughly unattractive character and dialogue that makes him insufferable.

Still, there are those nice locations and glossy visuals, enhanced by Martin Whist’s production design if not by Theodore Shapiro’s aggressively bouncy score.  Maybe just turning off the sound and enjoying the images on their own would improve things.