The Love Witch is a 2016 American comedy horror film written, edited, directed, produced, and scored by Anna Biller.

The film stars Samantha Robinson as Elaine Parks, a modern-day witch who uses spells and magic to get men to fall in love with her with disastrous results.

[11] Young, recently widowed witch Elaine Parks relocates to Arcata, California, a town that tolerates witchcraft.

After Elaine performs a ritual to attract a new lover, local professor Wayne accepts her offer to cook him dinner at his cabin.

Steve reveals that Elaine's husband Jerry died of an overdose despite having no prior history of drug use, and accuses Griff of letting his feelings cloud his judgement.

Clutching the bloody athame to her chest she smiles, imagining a mock wedding in which Griff declares his love and proposes, before leading her away astride a unicorn.

[13] The film embraces the camp of 1960s horror,[14] examining issues of love, desire, and narcissism through a feminist perspective.

[19] After Robinson accepted the role, she and Biller watched a series of classic movies featuring women with "great sociopathic performance".

[20] Filming took place on a sound stage for two weeks, and then on specific locations for the rest of the shoot, including Eureka, California.

[28] Anna Biller designed the sets and costumes to emulate the style of classic Hollywood films,[29] a years-long process that involved searching for the necessary vintage furniture at salvage stores or creating it herself if she couldn't find one.

[31] She collaborated closely with her cinematographer M. David Mullen, who is an expert on period cinematography and who has been nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards,[32] to create the hard lighting style characteristic of Classic Hollywood films.

[21] For the driving scenes, rear projection photography was used to give glamour to the lead actress, and in tribute to the opening of the Hitchcock film The Birds.

[35] The actors played their parts in a classic presentational acting style, with lead actress Samantha Robinson receiving accolades for her stylized performance.

The website's critics consensus reads, "The Love Witch offers an absorbing visual homage to a bygone era, arranged subtly in service of a thought-provoking meditation on the battle of the sexes.

"[40] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 27 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

[41] In a review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote, "Ms. Biller's movie, like its heroine, presents a fascinating, perfectly composed, brightly colored surface.

[50] In a New York Times editorial, A. O. Scott mentioned Biller as worthy of receiving an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Love Witch.