Power & Manipulation in The Love Witch

The following is an edited excerpt from my essay ‘Power and Manipulation in The Love Witch’

The Love Witch (Anna Biller, 2016) uses sex magic and good old fashioned female wiles to tell the story of a woman so desperate for love that she’ll seemingly go to any lengths to get it. But it also explores power and manipulation beyond the actions of our central character, and asks questions about what happens when wishes are fulfilled but don’t quite live up to the fantasy. A pretty pastiche of 1960s horror, it’s a technicolour telling of complex themes: desire, consent, gender roles, trauma and, of course, murder.

The film follows Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson), a self-proclaimed ‘love witch’ who moves to a new area after her husband, Jerry, leaves her and subsequently… dies (is murdered? Who can say?!)

The women in the film use sex and magic to varying degrees to gain power over and manipulate the men in their lives. But the film asks the question, especially of Elaine, who really holds the power if a woman’s own worth and happiness are so tied up in the love of a man?

Elaine’s witchy powers take shape in various ways. She creates assorted items: bags of magical concoctions, candles, and paintings that seem to manifest her desires, psychedelic love potions and witch’s bottles with potent ingredients like urine and used tampons. She also fulfils incantations, asking her goddess to send her a beautiful sweet man to love her as she loves him. But as anyone who knows anything about love spells will tell you, intention goes a long way, and Elaine’s trauma and confusion about what she really wants skew the outcome… to deadly effect.

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