Smush the title of The Love Witch, and it sounds like a cheesy, happy Valentine’s Day menu sandwich – the lovewitch.
But this no frilly rom-com — it’s an independent comedy horror.
And if you think it will tickle you with silly death and laughter, wrong again: It’s filled with sex, violence, paganism, and heavy subtext.
Critics have lavished praise on the film (95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), and audiences have been kind (61%).
And The Love Witch is a meal and a half, full of visual style.
It’s certainly a lot to digest.
But is The Love Witch a good movie?
The Love Witch’s Plot:
Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson) is a young witch desperate to find a man to love her. After the death of her husband, she arrives in Arcata, California, to start over.
Elaine uses magic spells to seduce men as she searches for a new man, leading to disastrous results.
And when a dead body is discovered, it’s up to Police Officer Griff (Gian Keys) to investigate.
Will the handsome Griff reveal Elaine’s crimes or be her next victim?
- Laura Waddell as Trish
- Jeffrey Vincent Parise as Wayne Peters
- Jared Sanford as Gahan
- Jennifer Ingrum as Barbara
- Robert Seeley as Richard
- Randy Evans as Steve
- Lily Holleman as Shelley Curtis
- Clive Ashborn as Professor King
- Stephen Wozniak as Jerry
- Elle Evans as Star
- Fair Micaela Griffin as Moon
Warning: The trailer below contains nudity and some plot spoilers.
The Good Things:
Suspended That Belief, +3 Points
The Love Witch was directed, written, edited, produced, and scored by Anna Biller (and some articles credit her with costume and production design, too). According to her Wikipedia page, Biller took seven years to complete the movie.
So this is an auteur piece, accountable only to the creator’s vision – and what a vision it is.
With its quasi-vintage feel and close attention to detail, The Love Witch is a callback to 1960s horror or other Technicolor movies.
Biller opted to shoot the movie on film rather than digitally, giving it a standout retro look.
And shots like the rear projection, while Elaine drives her Mustang in the opening scenes, are playfully borrowed from old-school film and television.
The sets and costumes mirror a bygone era but with a twist. In the background, you can see modern cars and buildings. Still, Elaine looks like a character transported out of time in her classic blue eyeshadow and long black boots.
While it could be a distraction, the vintage elements mixed in a modern setting add to the suspension of belief. For example, Elaine and her witch cohort embody even more of an outsider’s quality.
And the settings are fun. We’re treated to Elaine’s outlandish apartment, decorated with pagan nudist art, or the town’s vintage burlesque theater, where women strip and dance for whistling men.
But the most unique setting is the Victorian Tea Room. In this pink and red palace, women don floppy hats and gather to gossip while a musician strums the harp and maids serve tea.
Biller’s imagination runs wild, and we have fun catching up.
Samantha Robinson’s Tempting Performance, +6 Points
The number one reason to watch this movie is Samantha Robinson’s breakout performance in the lead role of Elaine Parks.
Playing Elaine was a tall order.
Robinson needed to affect 1960s gestures and speaking manners.
And Elaine is multidimensional, as she’s sultry and seductive when seducing men but self-pitying, pouty, and even callous in the presence of other women.
Robinson pulls this all off and never lets it drop.
She takes brooding drags on her cigarettes while bemoaning her latest victim “a pussy”; she lies to another character’s face with fake sincerity.
She appears as an innocent, mannered girl next door; she joyfully stripteases for a married man until he can’t resist her.
And if the range of the performance wasn’t tricky enough, the movie’s runtime is close to two hours, with Elaine appearing in nearly every scene.
Don’t just take my word for it – The New Yorker put it on their list of the best film performances of the 21st Century so far.
When a Woman Takes Power, +2 Points
The Love Witch carries themes like a golf caddy lugs around a variety of clubs.
I loved the idea that, if a woman fulfilled a man’s desire as much as he always wished she would, it would kill him, as Elaine’s victims literally die from love.
And for Elaine, becoming the ultimate object of a man’s desire left her unfulfilled. She keeps destroying the men in her life rather than keeping one bound to her, which she claims to ultimately want.
She’s a man-killing monster, the perfect embodiment of a 1960s-or-so beauty gone wrong.
The Not-As-Good Things:
That’s a Whole Lotta Lotta Love, -4 Points
The Love Witch is two hours long and lacks excitement.
Some of the scenes are ponderous, and I couldn’t figure out if they were necessary.
For example, the pagan rituals with Elaine and her fellow witches weren’t entertaining, and I don’t know their plot purpose. We already understand she’s a witch.
Unless I missed it, I couldn’t see its relation to the story progression.
And I wasn’t gripped by Elaine’s latest seduction or whether or not she would be caught. There’s no moral crisis or mysterious tension as to what’s going on.
Dialogue Heavy, Not Laughing, -4 Points
The Love Witch dragged at times. Most of the movie is dialogue, and while I wasn’t expecting a chase scene, it could have used something to shake this mold from time to time.
It’s also a comedy, but it’s not the type where you laugh at a gag.
Those who find the humor only get it through the associations with older movies or subtext.
Should I Watch The Love Witch?
Total Arbitrary Points Score: 3 Points
The Love Witch is a true vision and attempts to explore many themes of attraction and power among men and women.
I appreciate its unique visual style and a stellar performance by Samantha Robinson.
But I appreciated what the movie is more than what the movie does.
It’s a massive homage, and on that front, it nails everything.
But it still has to be its own movie. And it was bogged down by some plodding scenes, and I didn’t care for its plot.
But I’ll remind you my opinion has been outvoted and that most audiences liked the movie.
So if you like very auteur films, steeped in creative control, you might be into it.
If nothing else, it will put on a show. And it’s a female-gazed movie, which is still too rare.
While I didn’t love The Love Witch, maybe you will.
The Love Witch’s Legacy:
So what’s the legacy of The Love Witch?
The internet says that the movie has inspired academic essays on gender, power, and aesthetics in film. That doesn’t surprise me. This movie has to come up whenever you discuss feminism and female-gazed movies.
And there’s, of course, that cult status I mentioned at the beginning of the episode. No doubt, many would admire shooting on actual film and the fact that Anna Biller performed so many roles.
The movie did make it onto best of 2016 film lists, such as one from IndieWire and The New Yorker. It also won, as a tie, for the Trailblazer Award and Best Costume Design at the Chicago Indie Critics Awards. It also received the Michael Cimino Best Film Award at the American Independent Film Awards.
What’s Anna Biller up to now? Well, back in 2017, she said her next movie would relate to Bluebird, if you know that character from French folktales. He’s that not-so-wonderful guy that murders his wives, and the stories are about how the current one is trying to escape being his next victim. Sounds like a perfect vehicle for a Biller film, and I would definitely tune in to check that out.
But I don’t know if that’s happening. In 2023, her first book, Bluebeard’s Castle, came out. So it seems like she decided to write it instead, unless she later adapts it. The book has been praised by The Times Literary Supplement and The Telegraph.
And, yeah, Biller’s Wikipedia page says that, in July of 2022, she said her next movie will be called The Face of Horror. According to its IMDB page, the plot is, and I quote from IMDB, “A ghost in medieval England rises from her grave to seek revenge on her husband, in a gory tribute to classic Technicolor horror films.”
So let’s look forward to that one.
The Love Witch brought Samantha Robinson the Best Actress nomination at the 2017 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards.
After The Love Witch, Samantha Robinson has appeared in several things, but many look like short films. She did have a role in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as Abigail Folger. So it seems like her career is mostly independent movies, whether by choice or by necessity.
She has so much talent; so whatever direction she wants her career to travel, I hope she gets there.
Apologies to any cast members I didn’t highlight.
Lastly, something I did not know until after watching The Love Witch – Anna Biller is my favorite nonfiction author, Robert Greene’s, partner. If you don’t know him, he’s the guy that wrote The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery, among others. I can only imagine what conversations are like in their house with these two minds at work.
That’s all I have. Thanks so much for reading.
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Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources, like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
