Title: Beast

Year: 2017

Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Drama, Crime, Romance

Country: UK

Language: English

Director/Screenwriter: Michael Pearce

Composer: Jim Williams

Cinematographer: Benjamin Kracun

Editor: Maya Maffioli

Cast:

Jessie Buckley

Johnny Flynn

Trystan Gravelle

Geraldine James

Shannon Tarbet

Charley Palmer Rothwell

Oliver Maltman

Olwen Fouéré

Emily Taaffe

Tim Woodward

Barry Aird

Hattie Gotobed

Rating: 7.3/10

Title: Echo Valley

Year: 2025

Genre: Thriller, Drama

Country: USA

Language: English

Director: Michael Pearce

Screenwriter: Brad Ingelsby

Composer: Jed Kurzel

Cinematographer: Benjamin Kracun

Editor: Maya Maffioli

Cast:

Julianne Moore

Sydney Sweeney

Domhnall Gleeson

Fiona Shaw

Edmund Donovan

Albert Jones

Kyle MacLachlan

Melanie Nicholls-King

Rebecca Creskoff

Jared Canfield

Kristina Valada-Viars

Rating: 6.5/10

Michael Pearce is an emergent British filmmaker whose work has gained attention with his debut feature, BEAST. His films are psychological thrillers that burrow into themes of human nature and interpersonal relationships, often place characters in isolated, atmospheric settings that reflect their internal states. ECHO VALLEY is his third feature, continues to engage with these thematic and stylistic elements.

To step into a Pearce film is to accept an invitation into disquieting intimacy. His cinematic output, while still in its formative years, feels like an ongoing cartographic endeavor, mapping the shadowed alcoves where primal urges and societal strictures inevitably clash. Whether amidst the windswept crags of Jersey or within the deceptively tranquil expanses of rural Pennsylvania, Pearce consistently seeks out the hairline fractures in seemingly stable lives, allowing the subterranean to rupture the surface with a hand that is at once precise and almost disconcertingly dispassionate. The pairing of BEAST and ECHO VALLEY offers a revealing diptych, showcasing a young director honing his craft, and indicating a sensibility deepening its commitment to the ethically murky waters that pool in the wake of profound human connection and its inevitable fraying.

BEAST, in its quiet emergence, presented less as a standard genre piece and more as a slow, deliberate excavation of a heteroclite soul. Moll, brought to life with a captivating, almost disturbing fragility and perversity by Buckley, her breakout role, is a tightly coiled spring of suppressed desires and anxieties, a creature of instinct perpetually chafing against the suffocating gauze of familial expectation and the sheer claustrophobia of island life. Pearce, with a chilling elegance, renders Jersey not merely a picturesque backdrop but an active participant, its stark beauty somehow amplifying Moll's internal turmoil. The island's insularity mirrors Moll's own psychic containment - a place where secrets linger like a persistent sea mist and judgment hangs heavy in the air, a touch too artfully pronounced at times.

The film is praiseworthy in its potent refusal to neatly label its eponymous 'beast.' Is it the spectral serial killer haunting the moors, the enigmatic Pascal (Flynn) who ignites Moll’s dormant passions, or is it Moll herself, wrestling with a past act of violence and a budding capacity for transgression? The film denies a clear moral resolution, instead leaving the viewer with the discomfiting implication that Moll has found a terrifying kind of self-acceptance through an act of ultimate betrayal and, perhaps, self-preservation. It underscores the film's central exploration of moral ambiguity and the complex, often dubious nature of human identity.

Pearce commendably sustains this ambiguity, drawing the audience deep into Moll’s increasingly fragmented perspective. He largely sidesteps pat answers and, crucially, never indulges in gratuitous violence. Instead, his focus remains steadfastly on the effect of suspicion and the intoxicating, dangerous pull of a kindred spirit. The film’s formal discipline - its meticulous framing, its patient gaze, its sometimes intrusive sound design that favors raw environmental sounds over an insistent score - beckons a thorough, often uncomfortable immersion into Moll’s subjective world. It’s a work that grasps how truly disturbing horrors can arise not from sudden shocks, but from the slow, inexorable erosion of one’s moral compass, subtly nudged by circumstance and unleashed desire.

Buckley’s turn, particularly her anguishing battles, deafening bellows and the almost imperceptible shifts in her eyes, forms the very core of the film, signaling an ignited, dangerous power emerging from years of suppression. She delivers a disturbing, yet undeniably magnetic, portrait of liberation born from complicity, or perhaps, a chilling self-discovery through shared darkness, often making the deliberate narrative evasiveness feel less like a narrative choice and more like an exhaustive character study. Flynn, in a role demanding more suggestive presence than overt action, provides a crucial, equivocal counterpoint, his quiet intensity stoking Moll's awakening. Beyond this compelling duo, the film benefits immeasurably from its supporting players. James, as Moll’s oppressive mother, delivers a disquietingly precise portrayal of suffocating maternal control, each glance and clipped word a stark testament to the airless environment Moll yearned to escape. Gravelle, as the local detective who carries a torch for Moll, offers a more subtly layered performance, portraying a figure of presumed authority whose own simmering interests and ingrained preconceptions add another layer of insidious menace to the community's ingrained suspicions.

One might have expected Pearce to pivot more sharply after a promising debut, with ECHO VALLE, he has arguably doubled down on his thematic obsessions, though shifting the gaze from romantic fixation to the volatile crucible of familial loyalty. Here, across the pond, a pervasive sense of confinement - by both landscape and circumstance - remains a familiar Pearce signature. Horse farm owner Kate (Moore), still reeling from a searing personal tragedy, finds her carefully constructed solitude utterly shattered by the abrupt, blood-soaked reappearance of her drug-addled daughter, Claire (Sweeney).

The "beast" of ECHO VALLEY isn't an external menace so much as the tangled knot of a mother-daughter relationship, irrevocably twisted by addiction, manipulation, and an almost pathological maternal devotion. Pearce delves into the harrowing lengths a parent will go to shield their child, even when that child is undeniably destructive. The film doesn't hinge on the suspense of who commits a crime, but on the agonizing tension of how far Kate will descend into a moral abyss to protect Claire.

Moore, in a towering performance of exquisite agony, offers a face that is a raw canvas of grief, desperation, and an almost terrifying resolve. She internalizes Kate's escalating compromises with compelling conviction, allowing the viewer to witness the slow erosion of her character, driven by an unconditional love that, while deeply felt, sometimes treads a predictably extreme path. By comparison, Sweeney, despite moments of undeniable volatility, ultimately feels somewhat sidelined. Her Claire frequently serves more as a mere narrative spark for Kate's deepening quagmire than as a fully developed individual. Her performance, while capable, seems unduly constrained by a script that, regrettably, reduces Claire to a series of impulsive outbursts, denying Sweeney the space for the more nuanced and empathetic portrayal her talents might otherwise have afforded.

The palpable chemistry between Moore and Sweeney is undoubtedly the film’s strongest current (with Clare's father, played by a nonchalant MacLachlan, moving on quickly with his new family and offspring), intermittently elevating the material beyond its more conventional turns, even if one half of this potent dynamic felt remorsefully curtailed. The supporting cast also significantly shapes its atmosphere and escalating tension. Gleeson, as the predatory drug dealer Jackie, imbues a much-needed jolt of unpredictable menace, fueling the film's dramatic engine with a sneering attitude of schadenfreude. Shaw, in a more modest but memorable role as Kate’s butch friend, proves to be a welcome, vital, no-nonsense sounding board for Kate's increasingly desperate choices, not to mention that she and Moore brings about a sapphic solidarity that decisively pulverizes the troubling maternal bind.

Pearce’s knack for conjuring atmosphere is still commendable. Yet, the narrative itself leans more heavily into conventional thriller tropes than BEAST. While this provides a propulsive framework, it ultimately feels like a conscious compromise, perhaps trading some of the raw psychosexual intimacy for the sake of plot momentum. The "narrative convolutions," though designed to surprise, feel a shade less organic than BEAST's psychological thrust, occasionally straining credulity despite the commitment of the cast. The film certainly poses questions about the nature of sacrifice and whether love, however pure in its genesis, can become a corrupting force when stretched to its breaking point, yet these crucial interrogations are unfortunately overshadowed by the more insistent demands of the thriller plot.

Taken together, both films can instate Pearce as a director wrestling with the concealed corners of the human psyche. While he doesn't always strike a flawless equilibrium between psychopathological profundity and narrative drive, his works remain intriguing due to their distinctive mood and, pivotally, the often magnetic central performances that enrich his visions with volatility and vitality.

referential entries: Alex Garland's MEN (2022, 7.0/10); Autumn de Wilde's EMMA (2020, 7.0/10); Benjamin Caron's SHARPER (2023, 7.0/10); Filippo Meneghetti's TWO OF US (2019, 7.5/10).