‘According to the experts, men are very fragile...’
We often see filmmakers attempt to capture the aesthetic and feel of a bygone era. Indeed, the runaway success of Stranger Things has ensured that there has never been more of a clamour for nostalgia themed cinema. The Love Witch has got nothing to do with the family friendly fun of the 80s and 90s, instead focusing on the Italian horror classics of the 60s and 70s. If the footage were a little grainier and the script a little less satirical, The Love Witch could be plucked straight from the oeuvre of the Giallo classics. And yet…
Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson) is unlucky in love and still bitter following rejection from her ex-husband. She also happens to be a witch capable on enacting dangerous and highly potent love spells. Unfortunately, these spells are so strong that they normally lead to tragedy.
Writer/director Anna Biller perfectly captures the garish and ethereal qualities of Giallo cinema whilst also finding time to include meditations on sexual politics and the fragility of masculinity. Unfortunately, she takes two hours to do this. An obscene amount of time for a film of this nature, despite its laudable ambition. While Robinson is electric as the eponymous love witch, and her string of lovers are hilariously hopeless, too much of this movie is superfluous. Not boring per se, but certainly unnecessary. And the conclusion… it’s perhaps a little too abstract. But that will come down to personal taste.
Those without a intricate knowledge of trashy 70s horror movies will probably struggle with The Love Witch, but for genre fans, it’s well worth your time (even if that time period is two hours…).