9/1/2023 0 Comments Eve echoes review 2022![]() Leni’s act upon returning to Mt Echo is transparent (the other characters think she’s acting strangely because it is strange that “Leni” would have no context for the last year of her life), but Monaghan plays Leni with such tunnel-vision focus, and her deceptions are presented with such ominous-score seriousness, that it almost comes off as funny. None of these really work despite Monaghan’s best efforts in two puddle-deep roles for the bulk of the series, Leni and Gina’s characterizations essentially boil down to Leni loved one boy and Gina loved another, with some jealousy mixed in. ![]() ![]() There’s even a swerve into horror lite with a sequence involving a beheaded doll, a secret language, and seemingly voodoo ritual for the twins’ switch – which, it turns out, amounts to merely changing hair, makeup and accent (Leni’s is southern). The first four episodes (of six available for review) follow Leni as she attempts to decipher why an antagonistic Gina has fled from her, her distress often conveyed in clumsy voiceover via the virtual diary.Įchoes limply tries several different lanes for this mystery: thriller, in “Leni’s” suspicious disappearance and Leni’s search for Gina crime drama, as a jarringly condescending sheriff, Louise Floss (Karen Robinson), puts together the pieces psychological drama, as intrusive memories – flailing limbs in a tub, a burning church, their mother’s death from cancer – paralyze Leni in blunt, unprovocative blurs romance, as flashbacks reveal the young Leni’s relationship with Jack and Gina’s bond with a troubled boy named Dylan, played as an adult with an edginess too sharp for this series by Jonathan Tucker. Gina as “Leni” left a mess – she and Jack are estranged, her best friend Meg (Alise Willis) won’t speak to her, she’s been selling ketamine on the black market. (The Australian-produced series was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, which believably stands in for Virginia). As adults, they switch every year on their birthdays the “Gina” we meet is actually Leni, desperate to find “Leni” (Gina) and playing both roles in the meantime in Mt Echo. It’s impossible to describe the rest of the show without this so, spoiler alert, although it’s in the official synopsis (if not the trailer): since they were children, Leni and Gina have occasionally switched places, pretending to be each other and thus experiencing both lives (and romantic partners and, eventually, Leni’s daughter Mattie). ![]() That is despite a twist at the end of the first episode which is supposed to upend expectations and scramble the brain but ends up just feeling silly. It commits one of the true sins of peak TV, which is to be boring. Echoes reaches for all of these, yet struggles to capture a real feeling, its mysteries hollow, its deceptions shallow, and its various tones at best out of rhythm. Created by Australian writer-director Vanessa Gazy, Echoes is both ridiculous and cheap-looking, neither of which is a crime if you can deliver on at least one dramatic hook – suspense, creepiness, a suspicious backstory, a haunting, envy, sex. Unfortunately, little of the tension you could infer from this description makes it to the screen in this seven-episode series, which has some wild gesticulations but featherweight emotional heft. But they’re most devoted to each other, uploading their daily private lives into a shared virtual diary until the day Leni disappears in a suspected burglary, pulling Gina back to Mt Echo. Both are married to handsome men – Gina to Charlie (Daniel Sunjata), Leni to wrangler Jack (Matt Bomer). Gina is a bestselling writer who lives in an airy LA mansion and drives a Tesla, Leni runs a horse farm in their rural home town of Mt Echo, Virginia.
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