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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

People
Cast
Samantha RobinsonElaine
Gian KeysGriff
Laura WaddellTrish
Jared SanfordGahan
Robert SeeleyRichard
Jennifer IngrumBarbara
Randy EvansSteve
Clive AshbornProfessor King- Lily HollemanMiss Curtis
- Jennifer CouchWendy
- Stephen WozniakJerry
Directing
- Jacob TorossianAssistant Director
- Josh LongAssistant Director
- Anna BillerDirector
- Travis HuffFirst Assistant Director
- Evan L. RobichaudSecond Assistant Director
Writing
- Anna BillerWriter
Production
- Jared SanfordExecutive Producer
- Mike CrawfordLine Producer
- Anna BillerProducer
- Danica MorrisonProduction Assistant
- Derrick LavigneProduction Assistant
- Nadia DabibiProduction Assistant
- Sam MillerProduction Assistant
- Scott PerlmanProduction Manager
Recommended by
I Married a Witch, Bell, Book and Candle, House, Belladonna of Sadness