Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Best movie of this year hands down!

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

'The Love Witch (2016)' is without a doubt a shining technical achievement, the visually stunning sixties stylings are a sight to behold and the general throw-back vibe is almost pitch-perfect. Sadly, the script and story are lacking, to say the least. That's not to suggest it doesn't have a point, in fact it seems to be making some sort of misguided commentary on gender and sexuality in several scenes that stop the 'plot' to become preachy. This is made more head-scratching when you realise that the 'satire' is supposed to be serious, with the philosophy of the piece portrayed entirely earnestly on the part of the director (who wore many hats on this production). The feature just meanders about for far too long and doesn't really provide much in the way of character or narrative. Thus, I was actively bored for quite a while. 5/10

There are some excellent reviews on here, so i am only going to try and add to them and not repeat, nor will I go over the plot.To the casual viewer, the first impression may be that they are watching an old film, this is quite deliberate; the lighting, the colours, the make-up, all hark back to the 60s and 70s. Then someone pulls out a mobile phone or you notice that Trish is driving a modern BMW. The dissonance is striking and adds to the undercurrent of unease.The acting is very deliberate, much as it is in Twin Peaks; the subtext is not as convoluted as it is there, but it adds to the old-fashioned texture. Unfortunately, this causes a major miss-step when you can't tell if the acting is bad or if that's the way they were told to behave; I'm looking at you, crowd scene in the strip-club. Which reminds me, there is nudity in the film; really not sure why some people are making a bit deal about it, it's pretty innocuous.The overall theme is suffocating love, embodied in the glamorous form of Samantha Robinson, pitch-perfect as the horribly self-involved witch of the title, living in her insane fantasy life. She is ably supported in this by all the main actors and the director herself, who created the costumes, the amazing rug, the spell book and so much of the background.Maybe 2 hours is a little too long, but I really enjoyed this film and look forward to more from this director.

Acting ranges from mediocre to just plain bad. Gian Keys who plays the Sgt. I hope used whatever he was paid towards acting lessons.The story meanders about. There are a couple of places that feel like a scene was pulled out, as things jump ahead. There is little plot with nothing resolved by the end. Felt like they left it open for a part 2 which I would never watch. You are just glad this too long of a movie finally came to an end. While there is a bit of nudity, the two female leads are never truly nude. There is a scene with a number of men & women completely nude with full frontal, yet the two female leads have their breasts covered by their hair and wearing bottoms. It just seems so out of place to the point it's distracting from what is going on. There is no reason I could recommend wasting two hours watching this movie.

Even though our society has moved beyond a collective compulsion to burn at the stake, or drown in the nearest body of water, the women who intimidate or confound us, it is still commonplace in our language to discuss femininity in terms of magic and sorcery. One needs only think of the amount of times that we have been described a romance as synonymous with falling 'under a spell', or, the amount of times that dalliances have soured and relationships described as 'curses'. Considering the ease with which these bromides occur in our discourse, it comes as no surprise that Feminist director Anna Biller should want to investigate the seriousness of taking this terminology at its linguistic value.For example, in Elaine (Robinson) - the eponymous 'love witch' - the viewer finds a young woman that wants only to love and be loved in return. However, a bad experience with her ex-husband Jerry (Wozniak) leaves her with a broken heart and in doubt of men's capacity to love. Elaine turns to magic, using the comfort of Tarot and the structure of other practitioners to re-establish a sense of order in her world turned upside down. Believing, as Biller does, that men can only go so deeply into love and struggle to substantiate lust with emotion, Elaine begins to use 'sex magic' to create 'love magic'. She quickly realises, however, that her magic is too strong and that the combined agency of her eros and her philia is too much for the, newly-dubbed, weaker sex and causes their deaths. Through these interactions Elaine becomes something of a serial killer, dispatching each man that she encounters with the intensity of her love. It is often unclear throughout the film how responsible she is for the deaths. Whilst it is true that she gives Wayne (Parise) a homemade alcoholic concoction including hallucinogenic herbs which contribute to his expiration, it is presented on the screen that his death was the fault of his inability to contain the complex emotions he was developing for Elaine. It is not until her final victim, the police officer investigating the trail of deceased men, Griff (Keys), that her murderous inclinations are exposed, as she drives a knife into his heart in ritualistic homage to the painting that she has on her bedroom wall.The message that Biller has for us through The Love Witch is a potent one, and Elaine is a figurehead for the conflicted woman of the twenty-first century, both an empowered female, yet one in possession of ingrained misogynistic discourse. Biller demonstrates that men criminalise and fear women for their sexuality and their self-empowerment in much the same way as witches were centuries ago, and shows that women can use their oppressed position to gain leverage; yes, provide men with what they want but in a way that allows you to engineer what you want from the situation.Whilst the director's criticism on gender relations is something to be taken seriously, it is difficult at times to view The Love Witch as more than satiric farce that undermines the seriousness of the film's subtext. For example, the film is full of all of the over-acting of a B-Movie compensating for a small cast and low production budget, extreme close-ups that create suspense in spite of the dialogue, pretending to drive cars against backdrops, gaudy sets and garish costumes, and sneaking phrases of Für Elise into the soundtrack. If it wasn't for the fact that Biller claims all aesthetic similarities to 1970s films were accidental, except for instances of lighting, then The Love Witch could be considered a masterclass in vintage framing. However, if these style choices were unintentional, it serves to suggest an instantly outdated quality to the film, or an unusual creative direction, that fails to appeal to a mainstream audience.There are many of us that have a secret passion for B-Movies, and could learn to appreciate the aesthetic that The Love Witch offers in the same way that we accept The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), only without the music, and everything according to the colour scheme of a Tarot deck. It seems likely that even fewer could appreciate the static characters, and the incongruous scene changes. Moving from a hard-boiled detective segment, to ridiculing the police investigating a 'witch bottle' and revealing that they have never seen a used tampon, to a medieval renaissance fair and mock-weddings, the film invites you on a roller-coaster ride of satire, whimsy, and independent scenes that would have worked better as sketches or as short films.One could argue that all of these characteristics were intentional and contribute to the symbolic meaning of The Love Witch; the shallowness of the plot to reflect the perceptions of women as superficial creatures, the episodic manslaughter to demonstrate the criminalisation of femininity during acts of self-empowerment, and the incongruous scene changes to create a sense of confusion and nonsense to comment on the representation of women in contemporary society. Whilst all these things may be true, and certainly should be factored when absorbing and meditating upon the film's message about gender relations, it does not constitute good cinema. It is difficult to be dismissive of a film that is clearly offering something important to society beyond the entertainment of Hollywood Blockbusters, and yet, what is the value of the message if the film is presented in a style that is unappealing to its audience?Read extended reviews like this at 'The Cineaste Review' on WordPress - thecineastereview.wordpress.com