The CineFiles

My GOD is this film right in your friendly neighborhood cartoonist’s personal wheelhouse. I cannot stress what a beautiful film this is to look at. Every detail has been meticulously crafted by filmmaker and artist Anna Biller. From spending months personally latch hooking the pentagram run upon which Elaine reclines to do a lover summoning spell to designing and sewing the reversible dress she sports during a key scene of the film to creating the period perfect occult paintings that decorate Elaine’s witchy lair in a spot on perfect apartment carved out of a Northern California Victorian manse, Biller’s personal stake in her creation is palpable.

And lest you be drawn in merely for the idea of a perfect pastiche of the gloriously trashy “sexy witch” occult dabbling horror pics of the swinging 1960s and 70s, this film’s substance is just as meaty as its surface is dazzling. Taking the ways we socialize women to make finding romantic love the most important purpose in their life to an absurd degree, the film really makes you think about how damaging that focus can be for many women. It is also a mordantly funny skewering of the ways men can look at women merely as objects of pleasure of possession and how women can use that power as a lure rather than as an expression of their own pleasure.

Honestly, smarter people than I could write several dissertations about this movie. Just go see it. If you don’t, you really are only cheating yourself.