After dealing with a tumultuous divorce and an unexpected death, Kate (Julianne Moore) is trying to put her tragedies behind her while living in the picturesque Echo Valley and tending to and training her horses. However, when her drug-addicted daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney) arrives at her front door, petrified and covered in someone's blood, Kate's life is turned upside down completely again. Will they be able to find peace in Echo Valley finally, or will the dark past catch up with them?
FILMHOUNDS had a virtual sit-down with director Michael Pearce (Beast) to discuss the gripping drama-turned-thriller Echo Valley, the impeccable on-screen chemistry between Moore and Sweeney, and the practical effects.
How has the world premiere in New York been for you?
It was good; it was the first time I'd watched it with an audience since the film had been completed, which is always a nerve-wracking experience. You're very vulnerable as a director at that moment. Still, it was great because the audible response from the audience was great; all the laughs, gasps, and silences were in the right places, which is gratifying because if those things are in the wrong places, then you're in trouble.
And how did the script from Brad [Ingelsby, writer] come to you?
Brad developed it with producer Michael Pruss at Scott Free Productions. He had the idea ten years ago because the script is loosely inspired by his auntie's horse farm in Pennsylvania. She had a stable, and above it was an apartment that she rented out to different people. And he was interested in that dynamic. He'd written the script over the years, and I think there might have even been another director attached at some point, but then it didn't come together.
The project was open again. And Michael from Scott Free Productions sent the script to me because I'd met him a few years prior, and we were looking to collaborate on something together. I'd read through it in about an hour. And it was really in the Venn diagram of material I was looking to do, which was like propulsive thrillers. However, the script was also very layered and complicated, with relatable characters at its heart.
I was looking for thrillers, crime stories, but that were actually about something. A movie about which an audience would have to ruminate on whether they would do the same thing if they were in that situation. So, it felt very rich as a piece of material. And then I got in touch with Mike, and I just wanted to pitch to him and Brad. And there were a few other directors who were also pitching on it, what I could bring to it.
The film has indeed many layers, and its characters are complex. The feature is a drama to start with, and then it becomes a thriller. It's a back-and-forth between genres. When casting, what were you looking for in the two leading actresses?
In a way, I was casting as if it were a drama because I needed the best performances possible for the film to work. And so the reason I cast Julianne [Moore] is because she excels at these human drama stories where there are often quite relatable people that you might be behind you in the queue at the pharmacy, or you might be sitting next to on the subway. However, privately, they're going through a massive crisis in their life. She always finds a way to play each of these roles with nuance, human detail, and specificity. It's like she never goes for a generic performance. And that's what people respond to when they see her on screen.
She feels like she's really inside the skin of the characters, and her character in this film is going through a lot. She's recently bereaved. She's in financial difficulty. Her character's only close family relationship is the one with her daughter, which is both very damaging and very loving. And so, it was Julianne who was at the top of a very short list of actors that I thought would be right for it.
With Sydney [Sweeney], she blew me away in Euphoria because she seemed so committed to that role. And I knew she was looking to do different types of things and challenge herself. She connected to the script and was excited to work with Julianne.
They were both drawn to this mother-daughter relationship that's always in flux, one that you can't quite pin down. In one scene, this mother and daughter are tender with each other. And then, in the next scene, they are incredibly toxic. The relationship is so dynamic and quite appealing for actors to get their teeth stuck into.
Were there many on-set conversations to get that dynamic right throughout filming?
You find that those conversations are happening before you get to set. I speak with the actors one-on-one about the script, the characters, their motivations, how they arrived at their decisions, and what their thoughts are.
And you're not even trying to pin down everything. You don't even have to have the right answers. Sometimes, it's just about having interesting questions. That initiates a discussion about the characters. I see that as a process during which a director and actor are tuning into each other's frequencies. You're like, “Oh, yeah, we're talking about the same character. We're talking about the same type of movie and the same kind of relationship.”
You only ever have like a few days of rehearsal because these are such talented actors, and they're working all the time. By the time they arrive at the pre-production office, they may have just finished another job. So, I think we had a day and a half for rehearsal with all the actors.
So I'll do some scenes, but just with Julianne and Sydney and some with Julianne and Domhnall, [Gleeson] and [the] three of them. And it was more just talking through the script. Because they'd all done such great work, I didn't have any fear or hesitation that they wouldn't be great.
So, on the day of the shooting, the conversations were more practical. It's often about the physical blocking and then making adjustments where for example I think there's a beat we should spend more time on or a conversation that got more subtext to than we realised, or you're more spending the time trying to get more takes and seeing what else you can unearth rather than figuring out stuff that you could have figured out.
The majority of this feature is filmed on a remote farm. Were there any advantages or disadvantages of shooting in a remote location like that?
What was good was spending so much time at one location because often, when you're making a film, you only have a day at the location, and if you don't get a shot or a scene, you're never going to get it. However, we could always change our schedule if we missed something the day before. So that felt like an advantage.
The disadvantage of the remote location was mainly one for the line producer. We had to pay for the crew to have accommodations, and if we were closer to New York, they could have just driven in every day from Brooklyn. However, we were in a remote location, which put more pressure on the budget. Therefore, we had to make additional sacrifices elsewhere.
So, from a creative point of view, it was a blessing to be somewhat isolated in this place. But from the producer's point of view, I'm sure it was a significant headache.
You also use a lot of practical effects in this feature. For example, you're working with real horses and real fire. Why did you go with that particular approach?
Certain things make sense to do practically. Fire is one of those things that I can tell if it's VFX fire. It has very high kinetic energy, and fire's pretty challenging to predict. There are just certain subtle qualities about it that are different when you film it for real compared to when using visual effects.
The VFX did such great work, but the reason they're not talked about is because it's invisible. Just little things that they would do, like the barn that has already been burnt or the landscape. The best results come from a synthesis of choosing when to do something practically and when to do something with VFX. Often, on the same shot, it's a mix of the two and VFX artists like to work with practical elements because they've something tangible to work with.
And sometimes you can hear filmmakers say, ‘Oh, I do everything practically because it's somehow more marketable.' It's disingenuous to say because often they're doing so much with visual effects as well. The actual VFX department understood why we should use real fire. They were like, ‘If you can, if you can make room in your budget to build a barn and then set it all on fire, that's way better than what we can do.' And you're going to get more material in a short amount of time.
The horses were always going to be real. In fact, in some of the wide shots, I believe we added some VFX horses, but we were using footage from another scene that we'd shot, and the VFX team was placing them accordingly. Therefore, it is a situation where the two departments aren't in competition with each other. They're often working together.
You already talked about the budget. So, which one was then the hardest to sell: the remote location or the barn that needed to be set on fire?
As a director, you never get everything that you want. However, you're allowed a couple of non-negotiables. You can say to your producers, ‘Look, this one is significant to me,' but you can't have ten things. Therefore, creative compromises have to be made somewhere. Those were my two non-negotiables. It had to be that farm and that barn, and we would have to make sacrifices to make it work.
Also, credit to the producers as they understood the value of those two things. They saw all the other locations we were considering. And it was just so clear that none of them compared to that one. It just wouldn't work as a movie; it would be a lesser movie. They understood when I showed them images of real fires and visual effects (VFX) fires. One of the producers did Manchester by the Sea. There's a real fire in that, and Kevin Walsh understood the impact of that. Once I've used my two non-negotiables, there aren't any more non-negotiables.
For example, I wanted to shoot on film. Because it's such a textural and elemental world, with earth, fire, water, and the elements of weather that I felt I wanted, I thought it would bring a grittiness to it. That was a very long, protracted conversation, but in the end, I didn't want to sacrifice my other two things to get it. My cinematographer [Benjamin Kracun] and I spent a lot of time testing lenses and working with a colourist to try to find a look that still gave us the texture we were looking for.
Speaking of the look, many of the scenes are very dark, both emotionally and visually. I wanted to know why you wanted those scenes to feel like that.
We just always wanted it to feel natural. And so much of the film takes place in quite a bucolic setting. It's a thriller, but it's set on a beautiful farm in the summertime. It was a matter of ensuring that it felt grounded and real, and didn't feel over-lit. We had a bit of latitude to do that because much of the film took place during the daytime. If it were all set at night, if we were doing a movie like Panic Room or something where it's all overnight, we'd have a slightly different approach because you're just in that nighttime environment for so long.
One last question. While this film is released on Apple TV+, it will also have a short cinematic run. How important was it to you for the movie to have a big-screen release as well?
It's really important. I was a teenager in the 1990s, and I attended film school in the 2000s. That was still the era when everyone went to the cinema to watch movies. So, we made it, mixed it, and colour-graded it with the big screen in mind. It's my preference for people to see it that way.
Streaming has brought about some fantastic developments, and certain films have been funded and made that would never have been financed in the old model. Streaming comes with different trade-offs. When I saw it at the premiere in a big theatre with great speakers, I heard all of the work that we put into it. It's good for people to have the option to watch on the big screen if they can afford it. It's good that there's that opportunity.
Echo Valley is out on Apple TV+ and in select cinemas from 13 June.
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