The Love Witch

The Love Witch is Anna Biller's second feature film and my first time watching any of her works. The film is artistically spectacular - Costumes, shot making, colours, dialogue delivery - and original in scope. Biller commits to her genre (classic horror) and period-look (mid-sixties to early seventies, think "I Dream of Jeannie" or "Bewitched") and uses satire to turn the patriarchy on its head. It's a lot to try to accomplish in two hours. The film isn't without a few flaws. Sometimes the script is too thick and the pacing too slow, but overall, The Love Witch distinctively shines. Biller has a lot of promise as a director.

Better than people give it credit for. Beautifully shot and acted. The late 60s' theme works great. You almost thing you are watching a film from that era. It has a little horror and a little comedy but not to much of either. The runtime could have been trimmed.

I fully appreciate the *look* of this movie, for starters. It's got the sheen of a late-60s/early-70s thriller mashed with an Italian giallo, minus all the blood and gore. It's very fab. And the performances, particularly by lead Samantha Robinson, are fantastic. Even the makeup deserves quite a bit of praise, it's so on point. Everything seems to be in place and just so, except for the plot. The surreal air that envelops the proceedings masks a fairly pedestrian plot, that of a witch who cast spells in order to find her true love, with the help of her cult, er, fellow witches, some of whom are routinely naked. Like I said, the movie has all the feel of a period piece, but there just isn't much there, and after a while the viewer may become as bored as I did. Which is unfortunate, given the level of effort and talent.

This is a difficult one to review because it isn't really a horror. There's nothing scary about it and I can understand that a lot of geeks out there rejected this throwback to the sixties early seventies.

If you watch it in that perspective then you will like this a lot because the way the cinematography was done is clearly an ode to those days. In fact, the score, the editing, the lighting, the colour grading the way of acting and speaking, it's all done in a sixties style. Maybe for some clocking in at two hours is way too long for some and I can understand that because it's all talking and talking. But it do offers some 'magick' when the witches arrive. It's so beautifully done and it all looks like a real coven. The nudity, the rituals, everything.

So if you are into witchcraft then this is one to pick up. If you are into very old horrors with talking and talking it's your stuff. If you think you are going to see gore or even red stuff, forget it.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 1,5/5 Effects 0/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

This is the story of a beautiful witch called Elaine, well played by Samantha Robinson, who uses spells to get men to fall in love with her but every time she finds one it ends tragically. Fantastic use of colour here, in particular reds, pinks and blues. It is also an homage to the style of the films from the 1960's of the likes of Hitchcock. Plus it does serve as an interesting insight to the world of witchcraft for those who are not learned in the topic, in particular wicca or white magic.And it has plenty of nudity. However, after an engaging first hour the second hour is unnecessarily long and sadly lets the film down.