Film

The Love Witch

Anna Biller's hand-stitched, candy-colored fever dream follows Elaine, a witch convinced she can conjure the perfect man through spellwork, lingerie, and total self-erasure. Shot on lush 35mm in deliberately arch 1960s style, it's part loving parody, part genuine tragedy about the fantasy of feminine devotion. Gorgeous, funny, and never quite comfortable — patience is rewarded.

TMDb rating6.4

If you liked this

Suspiria1977

Argento's operatic witch-coven horror drowns you in the same primary-color maximalism — reds and blues so saturated they stop being décor and start functioning as pure emotional weather.

But The plot barely coheres and the English dub is rough; if you need logic over sensation, it will frustrate you.

Suspiria poster

Rosemary's Baby1968

The genre's founding text on a woman slowly consumed by a coven's plans for her body — glossy, paranoid, and quietly devastating in ways Biller's film only hints at.

But It's slow-burn and restrained where Biller is arch and campy; the humor here is almost entirely absent.

Rosemary's Baby poster

Jennifer's Body2009

A teenage femme fatale who literally devours the boys who desire her — sharp, quippy, and unfairly dismissed on release for daring to be glossy about girlhood horror.

But Diablo Cody's dialogue can feel dated now, and it tilts harder toward teen comedy than Biller's film does.

Jennifer's Body poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Leave Her to Heaven1945

Same saturated color used as psychological weather, same woman destroyed by her own performance of perfect love — this film is practically the ancestor Biller is arguing with.

A gorgeous 1940s Technicolor noir about a woman whose idealized devotion curdles into obsession and ruin for every man near her — the femme fatale playbook Biller is riffing on decades later.

But It's a straight melodrama with none of the wink or humor — 1940s pacing and morality that can feel stiff now.

Leave Her to Heaven poster
More like this (7)

Death Becomes Her1992

Two women locked in a beauty-obsessed death spiral, shot with the same gleeful theatricality — garish horror-comedy that never winks apologetically at its own excess.

But It's broader and sillier, with none of the melancholy under Biller's satire — pure slapstick where you might want subtext.

Death Becomes Her poster

Ginger Snaps2000

Werewolf puberty horror that treats female transformation as both curse and power trip, sharing Biller's fascination with how desire gets pathologized and punished.

But Low-budget Canadian genre filmmaking with rough edges — nowhere near as visually lush as what you've just watched.

Ginger Snaps poster

The Stepford Wives1975

The original, colder take on women engineered into perfect feminine performance — a paranoid-thriller cousin to Biller's satire, aimed at the same target.

But It plays almost entirely straight, without a shred of Biller's camp humor, so the tonal shift might land as a letdown.

The Stepford Wives poster

Belle de Jour1967

Catherine Deneuve as an icy, immaculate woman whose fantasies curdle into something dangerous — gorgeous surfaces hiding real rot, much like Elaine's.

But Buñuel's surrealism is cooler and more oblique; there are no jokes here, and precious little gore.

Belle de Jour poster

Barbarella1968

Sixties camp sci-fi drenched in the same saturated, retro-kitsch pleasure — a woman's sexuality played as glorious, unapologetic spectacle rather than shame.

But It's fluffier and far less interested in critique — pure pop confection where Biller keeps teeth underneath the gloss.

Barbarella poster

The Witch2016

Robert Eggers' austere period horror is genre kin — a woman's autonomy read as witchcraft — but stripped of camp for pure, creeping dread.

But Deadly serious and slow where Biller is winking and lush; go in expecting bleakness, not fun.

The Witch poster

Paris Is Burning1991

It's the nonfiction mirror to Elaine's fantasy: people constructing an idealized feminine self from borrowed images, except here the stakes are survival, not seduction.

A documentary about New York's ballroom scene, where performers build entire identities out of glamorous cultural fantasy — the same question of who gets to embody the ideal, and at what cost.

But No horror, no plot, just real lives filmed with warmth and urgency — a tonal complete reversal if you came for spectacle.

Paris Is Burning poster

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