Murder in the Vineyard

A pretty average Lifetime with an extra good plot.

Emma and her daughter Bea return to Emma's hometown looking for a change. Bea faces cyber-bullying from the cheerleaders at her high school.

I consider myself a LMN connoisseur. I've seen really good movies and really bad movies on LMN. Murder in the Vineyard had great potential - suspenseful plot, mean girls, good guys, romance. Unfortunately, the execution ruined all that.

The acting was pretty much what you would expect from a Lifetime movie. The plot had a lot of potential. However, the problem with this movie lies in the editing. It was absolutely awful!

The movie starts off with a 2 minute scene of someone being chased through a vineyard and ultimately attacked. Sounds like every opening sequence of a Lifetime movie and I wasn't expecting anything groundbreaking. Sadly, the rest of the movie devolved from there. It was one giant flashback to bring us to present but it included even more flashbacks. Not necessarily bad but the way it was done was what made it hard to watch. Randomly interspersed flashbacks with no lead in or preface, just randomly inserted scenes that made me wonder if I recorded all of the movie or if there was a problem with my DVR. And the music... the background music was poorly chosen and it was so loud most of the time that it drowned out the actual dialogue. Example, Emma abd Bea are talking in their kitchen while Emma makes dinner and there is jazz music playing, which I assume was meant to be ambiance but in reality it was so loud I missed actual dialogue.

Then there are the subplots. They are so vague it's hard to tell what the actual plot is as opposed to the subplots.

I don't know if Lifetime and the production companies are struggling to get out content quickly due to COVID or if the editors fell asleep when they pieced this one together, but they failed... hard. I'm only 40 minutes in to the movie and I was so disenchanted that I had to write this review without finishing the movie. I'm going back to finish it because I can't leave things unfinished. Be prepared for a possible scathing update to this review.

What a load of garbage! Terrible acting by everyone! Oh and the twerp playing the cop? He should get a job in mcdonalds or dishwasher in a restaurant!!!! Acting is not for him!!! And #helenamattsson at her worst. Only herself and God know why she accepted the part in this nauseating codswallop!

Pointless motive on why the bad person was the bad person. No one believed the girl. The police, her friends, and principal all were jerks. I agree with the other user reviewer about the wooden cop actor, but at least he ended up not being an idiot. Typical stupid ending. Clobbered in the head with a wine bottle and having basically no ill effects. A real wine bottle that would shatter against a skull would be 100% lethal. The corkscrew was somewhat witty ala Emily Blunt in The Girl on the Train. Entertaining but try to ignore the many dumb parts.

. . .every scene had a different distraction singer lamenting something. It is very annoying. I watch to view and not listen to the playlist. I am ready to shut the TV off.