Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A modern-day witch uses spells and magic to get men to fall in love with her, with deadly consequences.
Anna Biller's The Love Witch is a singular cinematic achievement in terms of visual craft and conceptual audacity. Its meticulous recreation of 1960s Technicolor melodrama aesthetics — sets, costumes, color grading, and lighting all painstakingly handcrafted by Biller herself — makes the cinematography genuinely exceptional and nearly unmatched in modern indie cinema. The film's novelty is equally high: it functions simultaneously as pastiche, feminist critique, and sincere genre love letter in a way no other film quite replicates. The plot is serviceable but deliberately episodic and somewhat repetitive by design, functioning more as a vehicle for ideas than a gripping narrative. Acting is stylized and intentionally artificial, fitting the aesthetic but limiting emotional investment. The ending deflates somewhat, losing the hypnotic momentum the film builds and resolving the satirical threads in a way that feels rushed and tonally uneven.