WINEVILLE - Mark Reviews Movies

Wineville, Dark Star Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 5, 2024

A wholly unpleasant experience, Wineville is a horror tale about sexual abuse and a serial killer operating on a California winery, as well as other unsettling developments that, thankfully, can't be stated out of worry of giving away too many of the twists in the plot. The temptation to just say them remains, though, if only because it might save someone from watching this. It's also not as if the filmmakers do a good job hiding the alleged surprises that emerge here.

For the most part, star Brande Roderick's directorial debut is alternately cruel and dull, which is a terrible combination for any movie and, especially, one of the horror variety. It opens with a young woman being disemboweled by hedge clippers, and then, it follows Roderick's Tess wandering the property of the winery where she grew up for long stretches of time. The idea, of course, is that she'll eventually find something pointing her toward the truth of what's happening on the property, and what's really frustrating and unintentionally funny is that the character can't even do that much.

Everything has to be told to her during the climax of the story, after the movie itself has intentionally revealed far too much beforehand or accidentally done so by way of abundant flashbacks. The only shock here is that Tess can't figure out what's happening right beneath or in front of her nose until a character bluntly says it all.

After the grisly prologue, we meet Tess and her son Walter (Keaton Roderick Cadrez, who is, yes, the director/star's real-life son) traveling from Las Vegas to the appropriately named Wineville. Her father has died, and since he didn't leave a will, the vineyard he owned and ran will likely become Tess' inheritance. She ran away from home when she was a teenager and has had no contact with anyone there since then, and given flashbacks of the father (played by Will Roberts) standing imposingly in the doorframe of her childhood bedroom, Tess just wants to sell the place and try to never think of it again.

Two people currently live and work at the winery: Tess' paternal aunt Margaret (Carolyn Hennesy, having some devious fun, at least) and her adopted son Joe (Casey King). We've already met Joe at this point, by the way, since he's the guy who lures the young woman to the winery to be brutally murdered, and with Margaret's chilly personality and rather hateful opinion of Tess, it's not much of a surprise when the movie shows whose hands are wearing the worker gloves holding sharp tools. Indeed, screenwriter Richard Schenkman might have realized this is a pretty shrug-worthy mystery in the first place, since there are only two suspects in play.

While Tess wanders around the winery to have more flashbacks about her increasingly disturbing childhood, Joe gives Walter his own tour of the place, showing how to quickly kill an injured chicken, becoming filled with rage when the boy almost cuts a vine, and having to make up a story about why there's the distinct trace of blood inside the grape masher. Unless it passes by too quickly to notice, cannibalism isn't part of the movie's cheap horror show, although, unfortunately, that leaves plenty of other things for it to actually include.

It's best to ignore the particulars, because they really are just shoddy attempts to shock in the absence of interesting characters or a compelling mystery. By telling and showing us all of these things in such detail, the movie essentially defeats its own aims as any kind of mystery, in fact.

For example, we learn the true nature of Margaret and Joe's relationship early on, in a flashback from Joe's perspective that's played with discomforting humor, so that's out of the way before we can even suspect something. The truth of Tess' past comes by way of another extended flashback (told to the local Sheriff, who has a crush on her and is played with refreshing decency by John Hicks), distractingly presented with the aesthetic of 16 mm film (complete with the sound of a reel rolling through a projector). Given what we already know about the lengths this story will go to try to shock us, the big twist that results from that information is practically telegraphed.

In other words, Wineville is a terrible horror-fueled mystery that exploits abuse and other ills for third-rate scenes of violence and fourth-rate non-surprises. It's a blatant shocker so incompetent that it's mostly embarrassing.

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