A mother and her drug-abusing daughter are entangled in a far-fetched crime plot involving scary dealers and hastily disposed bodies
Brad Ingelsby, creator of TV’s Mare of Easttown, has written an enticing-looking suspense thriller which Michael Pearce directs and Ridley Scott co-produces. And with the acting A-team of Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney in the leads, and rock-solid support from Fiona Shaw and Domhnall Gleeson, things look promising. But Sweeney is absent from the drama for too long for the central relationship to be satisfyingly dramatised. And after an intriguing opening, the convoluted narrative doesn’t merely jump the shark but lies down and lets the shark jump over it before the pair of them charleston their way across the rolling Pennsylvanian farmland where the film is supposed to be set.
Moore plays Kate, a lonely and unhappy grieving woman who trains horses and gives riding lessons on the farm she now precariously owns. She is divorced from a testy and judgemental lawyer called Richard (Kyle MacLachlan), and the woman she subsequently married has died. She gets some companionship from her no-nonsense neighbour and pal Jessie (Shaw). But the one light in her life is her beautiful, smart but fatally spoiled daughter Claire (Sweeney), who is a screwup and drug abuser for whom Kate has lavished all her money on pointless rehab programmes.
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