Had Anna Biller's The Love Witch come out in 1965, it would be part of the feminist cult-film canon. The vampy Elaine (Samantha Robinson) destroys the men in her life with sex magick (!) by more or less seducing them to death. She's unapologetic about her passion and her witchy tendencies, she makes sexy (but murdery) paintings, and she inters a bottle of her own urine and a tampon with a dead man. There's even a witchy Renaissance fair in the woods!
But as a contemporary film, The Love Witch is lacking: While Elaine has set her feminine wiles to deadly, there's not much else to her. In fact, none of the characters are especially fleshed out or sympathetic, the pacing and plot are arduous, and the film's potential for subversion (and humor—Jesus, it's about sex magick!) is overlooked. by Kjerstin Johnson