I saw a lot of praise for The Love Witch in 2016 and quietly added it to the checklist of movies in my brain under the heading of "I'd watch that but I'm not going to go out of my way for it."
I watched it last week and while I enjoyed it I'm glad that I didn't go to much trouble to see it (it's included in Amazon Prime and all I did was search Prime and then suddenly I was watching a movie.)
If you're into 70s exploitation flicks and witchcraft then oh boy is this the movie for you. It's not a great film, it doesn't have a great plot. But it's impressive for at least two major reasons:
1 - The visuals perfectly nail that dreamy, soft-focus 70s-almost-porno feel and it's beautiful. You have daytime interior shots that feel short and compressed and washed out and cramped contrasted with these beautiful exterior or isolated shots that are fuzzed around the edges and projecting rainbows. It's so pretty, and so well done.
2 - The acting looks like crap at first but when you remember the actors are aiming for that stilted, disconnected style and suddenly it's brilliant. The movie feels like a time capsule when it's really more like time travel.
And that's about all that I can really say for the movie. It does have this nice build of creeping horror and there were some moments when I felt genuinely unsettled, but it wasn't as engaging as I'd imagined from all the hype and I wasn't as invested as I like to be when I'm watching a movie.
If this were the kind of blog that gave stars I'd rate it about a 3 out of five - I probably wouldn't watch it again but I'm not mad that I saw it, and while I was a bit bored occasionally that was made up to me with the really fantastic art direction of the film.
Cheers,
- Alli
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