Unpleasurable in every sense of the word, Wineville is a chilling story that centers around a serial killer and sexual abuse that took place in a winery. It also involves other dark developments that are quite hard to outline without hinting at spoilers related to the storyline. The idea of saying them remains a temptation, however, since it might prevent someone from viewing this. It is also not like the filmmakers do a decent job concealing the supposed curveballs that are supposed to come up here.
For the most part, star Brande Roderick’s directorial debut is a mixture of violence, cruelty, and boredom. This is a disastrous combination for any film and most likely the death knell for any horror film. It begins in the most horrific way with a young lady getting her guts slashed out with hedge pliers, and then it follows Roderick’s Tess subliminally for long times including when she is on the vineyards of the estate she grew up in as a child. The intention is obvious, she is supposed to at some point discover something that periodically brings her to the events taking place on the property of the estate, and what is most astonishing and almost comically tragic is that this character does not even achieve this objective.
Tess’s character remaining dormant and inoffensive throughout the whole story does get resolved in a way at the end when the writer basically has to tell her the story multiple times to get her to understand it. This wouldn’t be the most frustrating aspect of the film if it wasn’t for the fact that even when circumstances suggest otherwise, Tess is blissfully naive about the core theme of U TANG with so screen time spent on her face alone.
The first shot in the film sees the young Tess abandon the vehicle she is driving which apparently leads to a crash or impact of some sort. This cuts to the establishment of Tess and her son taking a trip to go visit Wineville in order to see a vineyard her deceased father once owned. Since he was childless and there was no last will drawn, this business most likely will go into the hands of Tess and be run by her. Growing up, she had been estranged from all her family members as she had fled home at quite an early age. Moreover, every time commemorates her father, he can be seen in the memory flashbacks at the precise point where he seated himself at the top of the steps leading to specific rooms in her house, and his temperamentishing demeanor startled and overshadowed her, making her wish she never had such a bad past to remember.
Tess’ paternal aunt Margaret (Carolyn Hennesy, happily rather wicked) and adopted son Joe (Casey King) both live and work at the winery. Joe, let’s not forget, is the same guy who has now been introduced, because he is the one who brings the young lady that is later on accused of the murder into the site of the osseous killing, and considering Margaret’s coldness and loathing of Tess, the murder here is predictable once the movie starts to show whose diligent hands wearing the work gloves hold the sharp tools. Indeed, screenwriter Richard Schenkman may have understood this is quite an unremarkable whodunit to begin with because at any one time there are but two potential culprits available.
Tess keeps remembering more of her disturbing and explosive memories from her family while wandering in the winery looking for something. Joe takes Walter round the place, demonstrates to him, in an angry voice, how a handicapped chicken is to be slaughtered, scolds him when he nearly cuts a vine, and fabricates an explanation for the blood that is found on the grape press. Excecution did not last long enough to see it clearly in The Watcher and it would be wrong to say that cannibalism is in anything more than a crude sideshow but there are plenty of others that are included.
It’s better to move on from them as well because they constitute weak attempts at stimulation within a context that doesn’t feature strong personalities or an engaging enigma. When one says: “I particularly appreciate that you’re making this sound like such a bad movie,” they start to weave a web where the goal of the movie ceases to remain a mystery as such.
To illustrate, the authors reveal in the first flashback Joe’s intentional and excessively funny, something that we do not have the capacity to ever suppose even. That is the reality of Tess’ story. There are also other instances of a long flashback ‘narrated’ to the resident Sheriff who is plausibly presented as having infatuation towards Tess and is played by a very likeable John Hicks where Chas Denise was also disinterested, for no reason, in the aesthetic of 16mm film (with actual reel sounds on a projector). Knowing what one does about the resources with which this story was constructed, it almost feels redundant to say that such specific direction was in any way surprising.
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