Love is in the air, and for some people, it’s poison. As we suffer the hangover of Valentine’s Day,
what better way to savor the bitterness of the season than through Anna Biller’s 2016 horror-comedy, The Love Witch. In this movie, professional witch and (possibly self-made) widow Elaine Parks moves to the remote town of Arcata, California, looking for a fresh start and the man of her
dreams. Before long, however, her pursuit of love turns deadly.
It was a surprise to me when I first learned this film was less than a decade old, having only seen a screenshot or two. The Love Witch is highly stylized, with washed out color pastel palates, gaussian camera filters, and old-fashioned costumes that all combine make it look like a vintage Hollywood classic. With the sunny cinematography, bright colors, and beautiful sets, it’s hard at first to even recognize that it’s a horror film, let alone the numerous subtle and exquisite details such as Tarot-inspired color coordination and shot compositions that basically spoil the story. Even when blood starts to spill, the horror is rather implicit, cerebral, and subdued; focused less on monstrous adversaries or gory executions and more on the fractured, ever-degrading psyche of Elaine herself.
Samantha Robinson’s performance as Elaine deserves no small amount of praise. She’s a very subtle character, with violent intentions, coldly calculating manipulation, and a history of (implicitly sexual) trauma all hidden beneath a bright smile, expressed through comments that wouldn’t look out of place on some tradwife TikTok, and wrapped up in a pretty pink package. It’s a difficult role to pull off believably, let alone sympathetically, but Robinson pulls it off exquisitely.
Aside from the acting and the visuals, one other aspect that deserves praise is the themes. It’s a fascinating feminist work, using its vintage film aesthetic to explore the permutations of the classic femme fatale archetype. Biller herself claimed in one interview that the movie is about “what would happen if men loved women as strongly as women want them to,” as the men in the movie, while supposedly killed by Elaine herself, seem to die when forced “to experience their own feelings.” While it’s left ambiguous whether Elaine’s witchcraft is truly supernatural, her status as a witch similarly explores this archetypical effigy of women with the power to threaten men.
Between the multilayered and interesting themes, the dry wit and Hitchcockian suspense, and the stunning, eye-catching aesthetics, I found this film an absolute treasure to watch and encourage absolutely everyone else to enjoy it too. That’s why I rate this movie four and a half witch’s bottles out of five.
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