Julianne Moore explains ambiguous ‘Echo Valley’ ending, complex mother-daughter relationship

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Echo Valley.

How far would (or should) a mother go to protect her child?

That’s the question at the heart of Echo Valley, the new thriller starring Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney. On Apple TV+ beginning Friday, the film follows Kate (Moore), a mom grieving the recent loss of her wife, and Claire (Sweeney), Kate’s troubled daughter.

From start to finish, the film offers no easy answers about what constitutes a breaking point for a parent caring for their child. Kate loves Claire unconditionally, so much so that when Claire shows up crying and covered in blood, Kate jumps into action to dump the body of Claire’s boyfriend, Ryan (Edmund Donovan).

It seems perhaps rash or a bridge too far, even for a devoted mother, but Moore says it’s a result of the character’s unstable mental state at this point in her life. “I don’t think she’s thinking very far ahead,” Moore tells Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a one step at a time kind of thing, and she is at a very, very low point when we first meet her. She’s lost her partner, and she’s completely bereft.

“She’s under enormous economic pressure trying to keep this farm going, and she’s dealing with her daughter’s addiction,” she continues. “The one person she loves more than anything is this girl who’s struggling with drugs. When she comes to her and says, ‘I need help,’ her first instinct is, ‘Okay, well what do I do?’ Then it just gets out of hand. But we all struggle with that, certainly as parents. Were you helping somebody? But somebody not thinking something through makes for great drama.”

Claire tells Kate that she killed Ryan in a moment of self-defense during a fight, only for Kate to later discover that Claire manipulated her to dump the body of a kid who overdosed on drugs that Ryan sold him. Though one must wonder why the tarp-wrapped duct-taped body in Claire’s car doesn’t raise more questions.

“That’s really funny,” Moore says, chuckling. “That’s the production’s choice. That wasn’t me. It’s true; it’s rather suspicious. But she’s not being rational. Also, if I saw a dead body wrapped up, I don’t know that I would unwrap it. I’d be scared. And that’s the other thing, too. She’s scared.”

That fear turns into anger when she realizes that Claire has manipulated her into becoming an accomplice in another man’s death. “The betrayal is extreme,” Moore notes. “She’s shocked by it. But these women are very, very close, and they’re both exceptionally volatile. They both push things to extremes. And you certainly see that at the end, when you realize what Kate has been able to do.”

That extremity is particularly evident in a showdown between Kate and Claire in which Claire threatens to hurt Kate’s dog to force her mom to give her money. Kate then shields her dog with her own body. “Actors always like to have fun, extreme emotional stuff to do,” Moore notes. “There was a lot of enjoyment. We were able to push it really far. But the one element was that we needed to be very careful about was this dog. We could not scream around the dog because the dog doesn’t know that you’re pretending. Sydney and I know we’re pretending, so we can do it, but the dog doesn’t. So all those scenes where the dog was present, we weren’t actually yelling.”

By the end of the film, Kate must concoct her own elaborate manipulations. Ryan’s dealer/boss, Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson), uses Kate’s protectiveness to blackmail her into giving him more money. She feels utterly trapped until she devises a plan to frame Jackie for insurance fraud, arson, and homicide. It’s a shocking turn of events when her helpless submission to Jackie turns out to be a front for her masterful scheme.

Moore remembers being utterly delighted by that twist. “When I got the script, I was sick in bed and I was just like, ‘Okay, let me read a few things,'” she recalls. “So I’m like, ‘Okay, this is a family drama. It’s emotional. It was really well written. And I did not see that twist coming. I was absolutely thrilled. I laughed out loud. Don’t underestimate a middle-aged woman.”

With normalcy restored once more in the aftermath of their showdown and a barn fire, Kate hears a knock on the door one night — and opens it to see Claire once again standing on her stoop. Then, the film cuts to black.

So, will Kate forgive Claire and welcome her with open arms, or slam the door in her face? “That’s a question for the audience, isn’t it?” Moore posits. “That’s where the movie ends. The movie ends with, ‘And here’s a knock on the door.’ I know what my answer is, but a lot of people who’ve seen the movie have said different things.

“Some people say like, ‘Oh, absolutely, she’d let her in,’ or ‘I would let her in,'” Moore continues. “Others say, ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t open the door. I wouldn’t do that.’ It’s wonderful to see that it’s really open for discussion at the end of the film. It’s been inciting a lot of conversation, which is great.”

Moore is reluctant to share what she thinks Kate or even she herself would do. “I want you to wonder,” she says. “I want you to go, ‘What would I do?’ That’s what the movie asks.”

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The final silent looks between Kate and Claire are fairly inscrutable, and Moore notes that she and Sweeney were instructed to give a wide range of options in their acting choices. “I was given a lot of direction,” she says. “I did a lot of different things. A lot of the direction was to feel everything and to let a lot of choices cycle through my head.”

Moore, however, does finally relent and admit that her instinct would be to forgive Claire. “I would open the door and let her in,” she says. “A lot of people have different relationships to that kind of thing. But I feel like she’s forever and ever connected to this daughter.”