Terroir
2023 · 20m
Directed by Rory Wood
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Wine student Alice accepts an invitation to a biodynamic vineyard, where eccentric winemaker Eno's bond with his vines proves far more sinister than his methods first suggest.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A wine-country thriller that treats biodynamic mysticism not as trendy backdrop but as the actual horror—the film trusts us to find the real dread in agricultural pseudo-spirituality and obsession, which is refreshingly unhinged for 2023.
Wood's command of pastoral gothic registers as formally assured, situating the film within a lineage of folk-horror and body-horror traditions while maintaining the measured pacing that distinguishes threshold cinema from mere genre exercise.
The decision to let Eno's monologues about vine-consciousness play straight, without winking irony or score-driven punctuation, transforms what could be mannered eccentricity into something genuinely unsettling—that restraint does all the work.