# The Love Witch
**The Love Witch** is a 2016 American horror-comedy film written, directed, produced, and edited by [Anna Biller](https://www.edgepedia.org/anna-biller), who also designed its sets and costumes and wrote much of its music. It stars Samantha Robinson as Elaine, a modern-day witch who uses spells and potions to make men fall in love with her, with deadly results.[1](https://www.thewrap.com/the-love-witch-review/) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_love_witch) Shot on 35 mm film in a saturated [Technicolor](https://www.edgepedia.org/technicolor) style modeled on 1960s and early 1970s genre cinema, the film became a critical success and a cult favorite.[3](https://theasc.com/article/the-magic-of-hard-lighting-for-the-love-witch/) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_love_witch)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 2016, USA; distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories; 120 minutes[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_love_witch) |
| Director | Anna Biller, her second feature after *Viva* (2007); she also wrote, produced, edited, designed the sets and costumes, and wrote much of the music[1](https://www.thewrap.com/the-love-witch-review/) • [4](https://moviefreak.com/love-witch-2016-interview-anna-biller/) |
| Lead | Samantha Robinson as Elaine, a love-obsessed witch and serial killer[1](https://www.thewrap.com/the-love-witch-review/) |
| Cinematography | M. David Mullen, ASC, shooting 35 mm with hard lighting and maximum color saturation to mimic 3-strip Technicolor[3](https://theasc.com/article/the-magic-of-hard-lighting-for-the-love-witch/) |
| Music | Much of the score sourced from Ennio Morricone's 1960s thriller music[5](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-love-witch) |
| Reception | 95% Tomatometer from 114 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes; Metascore 82 ("universal acclaim") on Metacritic from 27 critic reviews[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_love_witch) • [6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-love-witch) |
| UK release | 10 March 2017, rated 15[5](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-love-witch) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Elaine, a beautiful young witch, leaves San Francisco for a small [Northern California](https://www.edgepedia.org/northern-california) town after the death of her husband, shown in flashback as a poisoning presumably at her hands. In her gothic Victorian apartment she makes spells and potions, then picks up men and seduces them. Her spells work too well: the men she enchants become needy, emotional, and then die, leaving her a string of victims to dispose of. When she meets a man she believes is her true love, her desperation to be loved drives her toward insanity and murder.[7](https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/the-love-witch-is-a-smart-and-gorgeous-homage-to-technicolor-horror/2016/11/17/06833f36-a906-11e6-ba59-a7d93165c6d4_story.html) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_love_witch)
Along the way Elaine moves through a parade of male caricatures, including a French literature professor, a frustrated married man, and a square-jawed detective investigating her for murder.[5](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-love-witch) • [1](https://www.thewrap.com/the-love-witch-review/) The film ends, as Time Out's review puts it, "on a daring note of psychosis."[5](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-love-witch)
## Origins and themes
**The idea** came to Biller while doing a publicity shoot for her previous film, *Viva* (2007), when she became fascinated by the covers of pulp and romance novels and the witches depicted on some of them, and decided to make a movie about a sexy witch. Developing the character, she drew on her own experiences as a young woman and on books about gender and male psychology, including advice such as "don't love too much," and conceived Elaine as a woman who kills for love.[4](https://moviefreak.com/love-witch-2016-interview-anna-biller/) • [8](https://entertainment-focus.com/2016/06/20/eiff-2016-anna-biller-interview/)
Biller has said she researched witchcraft extensively so that the rituals would be authentic for witches in the audience, and that the film deliberately does nothing supernatural; the magic is psychological and the horror comes from Elaine herself.[8](https://entertainment-focus.com/2016/06/20/eiff-2016-anna-biller-interview/) The film's stated subject is the difference between how men and women experience love, a theme Biller said is rarely discussed in movies.[8](https://entertainment-focus.com/2016/06/20/eiff-2016-anna-biller-interview/) Critics have read the film as a feminist critique of the gender politics of 1960s and 1970s sexploitation and horror cinema, in which women were often little more than eye candy; Biller subverts those roles by centering a powerful but lonely female villain.[7](https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/the-love-witch-is-a-smart-and-gorgeous-homage-to-technicolor-horror/2016/11/17/06833f36-a906-11e6-ba59-a7d93165c6d4_story.html) • [9](https://mubi.com/en/films/the-love-witch/critics-reviews) Scholarly work on the film argues that its lavish mise-en-scène and excessive femininity reanimate the icons and genres of the 1960s and 1970s screen while investing them with the vantage point of a powerful female protagonist.[10](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2021.1879195)
## Visual style and production
The film's look is its defining feature. Biller and cinematographer M. David Mullen, who had shot a 16 mm short for her in the style of old 3-strip Technicolor movies, chose modern lenses over 1960s optics such as Baltars or Panchros because Biller wanted the colors of her sets and costumes captured with maximum saturation and accuracy.[3](https://theasc.com/article/the-magic-of-hard-lighting-for-the-love-witch/) The result resembles a cheap exploitation horror film of the 1960s or early 1970s, down to the handmade sets and costumes and the deliberately wooden acting style, which one academic account describes as producing a Brechtian estrangement effect that invites audiences to think about what they are seeing.[11](https://comum.rcaap.pt/server/api/core/bitstreams/3e5a4494-fe09-4c6f-9a99-d48c6e57817e/content)
Biller is a total filmmaker in the traditional sense: besides writing, directing, producing, and editing, she designed and built and painted her sets, constructed props, sewed the costumes, and scored the movie.[3](https://theasc.com/article/the-magic-of-hard-lighting-for-the-love-witch/) • [1](https://www.thewrap.com/the-love-witch-review/) She has described the style itself as meaning-bearing: the lighting technique, gauzes over the lenses, and meticulous color and set design are all deliberate, meant to create a kind of hypnosis or trance over the audience.[12](https://nofilmschool.com/2016/11/the-love-witch-anna-biller-interview) The soundtrack leans on sourced music by [Ennio Morricone](https://www.edgepedia.org/ennio-morricone) from 1960s thrillers, and the film uses retro devices including rear-screen projection and kaleidoscope lenses.[5](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-love-witch) • [1](https://www.thewrap.com/the-love-witch-review/)
## Reception
The film premiered on the festival circuit in 2016, appearing at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and reached US theaters in November 2016.[13](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2016/films/the-love-witch) • [1](https://www.thewrap.com/the-love-witch-review/) Critics responded strongly to its craft: Rotten Tomatoes records a 95% Tomatometer from 114 reviews, with a critics consensus calling it "an absorbing visual homage to a bygone era, arranged subtly in service of a thought-provoking meditation on the battle of the sexes."[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_love_witch) Metacritic assigned a metascore of 82, its "universal acclaim" band, based on 27 critic reviews, including a 100 from The Guardian, whose critic praised Biller's "ecstasy of artificiality."[6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-love-witch) Audience scores ran cooler, with a 61% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.2 user score on Metacritic, and some reviewers found the deliberately paced two hours slow.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_love_witch) • [6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-love-witch)
The film's reputation has grown as a cult favorite and a touchstone of feminist horror. A 2022 Time Out listing of underrated witch movies called it a "tour de force of visual style" steeped in 1970s imagery, and scholarly work has placed it alongside films such as *Jennifer's Body* and *The Substance* as part of a wave of visually distinctive horror by women filmmakers.[14](https://time.com/6221746/underrated-witch-movies-halloween/) • [15](https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/76491/34733.pdf) In 2017, The Independent connected the film's witch imagery to a broader cultural moment in which witchcraft had become a symbol of female self-empowerment.[16](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-love-witch-witchcraft-anna-biller-feminist-horror-film-donald-trump-lana-del-rey-a7627921.html)
## References
1. ['The Love Witch' Review: Sumptuous Horror Indie Is a Retro Blast, TheWrap (Robert Abele, November 10, 2016)](https://www.thewrap.com/the-love-witch-review/)
2. [The Love Witch, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_love_witch)
3. [The Magic of Hard Lighting for The Love Witch, American Cinematographer (M. David Mullen, ASC)](https://theasc.com/article/the-magic-of-hard-lighting-for-the-love-witch/)
4. ["The Love Witch" – Interview with Anna Biller, MovieFreak.com (Sara Michelle Fetters)](https://moviefreak.com/love-witch-2016-interview-anna-biller/)
5. [The Love Witch review, Time Out (Joshua Rothkopf)](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-love-witch)
6. [The Love Witch Reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-love-witch)
7. ['The Love Witch' is a smart and gorgeous homage to Technicolor horror, The Washington Post (Pat Padua, November 17, 2016)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/the-love-witch-is-a-smart-and-gorgeous-homage-to-technicolor-horror/2016/11/17/06833f36-a906-11e6-ba59-a7d93165c6d4_story.html)
8. [EIFF 2016: Anna Biller interview, Entertainment Focus (June 20, 2016)](https://entertainment-focus.com/2016/06/20/eiff-2016-anna-biller-interview/)
9. [The Love Witch critic reviews, MUBI (Richard Brody, J. Hoberman, and others)](https://mubi.com/en/films/the-love-witch/critics-reviews)
10. [(Un)masking femininity: desire and fantasy in Anna Biller's The Love Witch, Feminist Media Studies Vol 22, No 5 (2022)](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2021.1879195)
11. [Academic thesis excerpt on The Love Witch's aesthetic and Brechtian estrangement, RCAAP repository](https://comum.rcaap.pt/server/api/core/bitstreams/3e5a4494-fe09-4c6f-9a99-d48c6e57817e/content)
12. ['The Love Witch': If You Aren't Using Style as Substance, You're Doing it Wrong, No Film School (November 2016)](https://nofilmschool.com/2016/11/the-love-witch-anna-biller-interview)
13. [The Love Witch, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2016/films/the-love-witch)
14. [13 Underrated Witchy Movies Perfect for the Halloween Season, Time (October 2022)](https://time.com/6221746/underrated-witch-movies-halloween/)
15. [MA thesis on feminist horror films including The Love Witch, Erasmus University Rotterdam repository](https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/76491/34733.pdf)
16. [The Love Witch and witchcraft's appeal in the era of Trump, The Independent (Clarisse Loughrey, March 14, 2017)](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-love-witch-witchcraft-anna-biller-feminist-horror-film-donald-trump-lana-del-rey-a7627921.html)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Comedy horror films › 2000s and 2010s comedy horror films*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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