The Love Witch (2016)

I was surprised of watching an awful movie in 2016!

About 10 minutes into the film I paused it and read a couple of articles on the Internet and read up on the director and her, lets call it "agenda" regarding the film. I carried on watching. Carried on watching for the whole 2 hours. Even though I had enough at about an hour in.OK, let's talk good points. The film was absolutely stunning to look at, with beautifully rich, vibrant colours and a good looking cast. Yes, it certainly had that homage feel to it. A little bit of 60s, but mainly 70s. It looked and felt like it could've been a lost Hammer film, recently restored to its full glory. Really nice set pieces and costumes. Even a touch of a eurotashy type score. Even the acting, as its meant to be, nice and cheesy. They had that spot on, if indeed it was meant to be a homage or actually set in the 70s (I'll come back to that later). That's really all the positives I took away from it. You could say it's style over substance. Anna Biller certainly tried to add something of substance in there which just ended up being one long joke. A very long, 2 hour joke. First of all, let's touch on the 70s vibe, remembering that I've only seen the one trailer (I don't watch many trailers or clips for the same film due to the amount of disappointed when watching the film) and read no other reviews, till that 10 minute mark anyway. My first gripe and probably the major one, with the way the movie looked and felt, if you're going to make a film so overpowered with a 60s/70s feel then set it in the 60s/70s. Seeing a very small amount of modern cars mixed in with all the old (the opening scene - the police car. Shortly after - the BMW pulling up outside the house) "classic" cars really throws off that feeling.The other and only issue, a big one as a whole. The whole film was one big kick in the balls to men by a female director that's clearly one of these modern third-wave pseudo feminists (that's had a few bad experiences, but don't worry, her and her 10 cats will live happily ever after together)! Quite frankly it ruined the film turning it into, one big joke. It ended up being a 2 hour long feminist propaganda film. It ended up being a mess, not deciding what it wanted to be. A Pagan Witch film? A Hammer film? A homage film? Set in present day film? A sexist film? A feminist's wet dream? It's ended up being nothing more than a spoof.You can read my full review on Maven's Movie Vault of Horror.

...a colorful though utterly vacuous trip through writer/director/editor/costumer/producer (deep breath) composer/designer/editor/bottlewasher (another deep breath) janitor/thankfully not actor Anna "I woulda if I coulda" Biller's risible meditation on love, sex, and witchery. There's really little to say about this fast-forward darling other than, "Gosh, it's pretty, and the lensing ain't too hateful." Thank you for leaving at least a few things to the professionals, Anna. Featuring low-rent Westworld performances from virtually the entire cast, including an inexplicably nudity-shy lead, "The Love Witch" is as pure an exercise in tedium as I've seen in a long time. Hopefully, this is enough verbiage to post; I'm just damn sorry I wasted time with this one, even on fast-forward, and I'm hoping this will warn at least a few folks from doing the same. Without question, easily missed without a second thought.

I expected something really cheap when I chose to watch this movie before sleep - but immediately got pleasantly surprised with the awesome cinematography. Then the intentional naivete in acting the retro style, solid characters successfully mocking the witchcraft and witch covens (with a really accurate representation) and so on. Even the odd mix of 70's & modern technology gave a nice oniric/comic touch to the whole thing. So so sorry that the plot didn't work out so well and became boring pretty soon. As the user 'mysticalfredo' said: "I wanted to get my scissors out and trim this film for Biller" :) But honest congratulations for all the rest!