The Love Witch is a film of both glimmering achievement and exhausting frustration: Its singular vision by auteur (director, writer, production designer, etc.) Anna Biller simply hums. It’s even more vibrant than the Technicolor movies it pays tribute to, e.g. Bell, Book and Candle. And its idea to take the barely-subtext feminist themes of witch cinema and make them explicitly investigated text is a fascinating choice, one that places it in a half-ironic zone that isn’t all that far off from my beloved Z-O-M-B-I-E-S movies… at least, if they had lots of nudity.
But the film is completely backbroken by its slim, repetitive story that drags on for a grating two hours. Witch antiheroine Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson) ensnares and kills men one at a time like she’s a slasher villain crossed with a black widow, but the cadence and payoff of those scenes never escalate in a rich enough manner to justify making this as more than a short film, or maybe one of those 75-minute turbo-features.
That said, I’m tempted to give the film a passing grade just on how brilliant the production is and how well-cast Robinson is in the lead. The film has gorgeous colors, lovely costumes and makeup, terrific sets, and an overall intoxicating visual vibe. It’s too bad I just couldn’t get on its narrative wavelength.
This review appeared in Goodie Bag: Witch Movies
Is It Good?
Nearly Good (4/8)
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