The Love Witch

Plot

Elaine Parks, a young witch recently widowed after her husband Jerry's death, moves to Arcata, California—a town where witchcraft is accepted—hoping for a fresh start. She takes a rental in a Victorian building owned by her mentor Barbara, with interior decorator Trish Manning as the property's caretaker. Trish brings Elaine to a tea room, where Trish's husband Richard meets her and becomes instantly infatuated. Elaine then casts a spell to draw a new lover, and a local professor named Wayne agrees to let her cook dinner at his cabin.

There she gives him a hallucinogenic drink, they sleep together, and his emotional, delirious behavior disgusts her. Wayne dies overnight; Elaine buries him along with a witch bottle holding her urine and a used tampon. While Trish is away for a few days, Elaine seduces Richard but cuts things off when he grows needy. Officer Griff Meadows and his partner Steve find Wayne's body and the witch bottle, which points them to Elaine.

Griff asks Elaine to go horseback riding, and they attend a midsummer solstice festival where her coven leaders stage a mock wedding. A handfasting ceremony gives them matching rings, and Elaine realizes she loves Griff, though he doesn't feel the same. Griff tells Steve their boss ordered the case closed; Steve notes that Jerry also died of an overdose with no history of drug use and accuses Griff of bias. Griff punches Steve and leaves.

Richard kills himself in the bathtub, and Trish finds him. She confides in Elaine about suspecting an affair drove him to suicide, then puts on Elaine's ring. When Trish returns the ring, she tries on Elaine's wig, makeup, and lingerie, then discovers a shrine to Elaine's dead lovers, including Richard. Elaine returns, Trish attacks her, and leaves vowing Elaine will burn.

Themes

The Love Witch uses the witch as a metaphor for women, embodying both men's fears of women and women's own powers of intuition, motherhood, and sorcery. The lead character examines the femme fatale archetype through a feminist perspective, embracing the camp of 1960s horror while exploring love, desire, and narcissism. Anna Biller's filmmaking is influenced by feminist film theory.

Production

While writing the script, Anna Biller read relationship self-help books and noted advice that a woman should love a man less than he loves her to keep him. She saw a parallel with female characters in classic cinema who love someone to death, such as Ellen in Leave Her to Heaven, and created Elaine in that vein. Biller studied witchcraft and practiced it herself, decorating Elaine's apartment with colors from the Thoth tarot deck. Casting involved a typical audition process; the role of Trish was the hardest to fill, and Biller eventually cast an English actress despite not initially intending to.

Biller chose Samantha Robinson for the lead because Robinson was poised and self-possessed with a quality different from most people. After Robinson accepted, they watched classic movies featuring women with great sociopathic performance and collaborated closely to develop Elaine, with Biller rewriting parts of the script afterward. Filming took place on a sound stage for two weeks and then on locations including Eureka, California; the tea room scenes were shot in the Herald Examiner Building in Los Angeles.

Reception

The Love Witch was met with near-universal praise from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 115 reviews are positive, with an average score of 7.7 out of 10. The site’s summary describes it as a visually striking tribute to older films that also offers a thoughtful look at gender dynamics. Metacritic gave it an 82 out of 100 based on 27 reviews, calling it a must-see.

A. O. Scott of The New York Times noted that the movie, like its main character, has a bright, carefully composed surface hiding something deeply dark, much like love itself. The film appears at number 41 on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the top 100 horror movies. It also made year-end lists from Rolling Stone (top 10 horror of 2016), The New Yorker, and IndieWire. At the Chicago Indie Critics Awards, it tied for the Trailblazer Award and won Best Costume Design.

It took the Michael Cimino Best Film Award at the American Independent Film Awards. The Dublin Film Critics’ Circle gave M. David Mullen the prize for Best Cinematography. Samantha Robinson earned a Best Actress nomination at the 2017 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards for her role as Elaine. Emma Willis was nominated for Technical Achievement in hair and makeup by the London Film Critics’ Circle.

In a New York Times piece, A. O. Scott suggested that Anna Biller deserved an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.