The Love Witch was the first movie I saw for a double feature tonight, and I'd never heard of it before. Was mostly interested in the double feature for the second movie, 1977's Suspiria, but The Love Witch was definitely intriguing... But maybe a little frustrating and tedious as it went along, too.
It's distinctive, with memorable visuals and influences taken from all sorts of interesting places. It throws a lot of stuff into a blender and makes you drink it all.
It's good at first, but I think it wore out its welcome a bit in the second half. At two hours, it felt like a bit much, because there's a certain amount of repetition to the story. I feel like the pacing is sluggish, but possibly by design. Lots of lingering shots and scenes that go on about a minute or two longer than they need to, in a way that's either incompetent filmmaking or a wink to a certain kind of campy/old-school film. I'd lean towards guessing it was the latter, but it still got on my nerves throughout the second hour.
Much of this felt like a joke I wasn't quite in on. I can appreciate some of what it was saying, got a few chuckles from it, and the style/visuals on offer, but The Love Witch did prove a bit exhausting by the end of it all. I think there's a very good 80 to 90-minute movie in there somewhere.
It's distinctive, with memorable visuals and influences taken from all sorts of interesting places. It throws a lot of stuff into a blender and makes you drink it all.
It's good at first, but I think it wore out its welcome a bit in the second half. At two hours, it felt like a bit much, because there's a certain amount of repetition to the story. I feel like the pacing is sluggish, but possibly by design. Lots of lingering shots and scenes that go on about a minute or two longer than they need to, in a way that's either incompetent filmmaking or a wink to a certain kind of campy/old-school film. I'd lean towards guessing it was the latter, but it still got on my nerves throughout the second hour.
Much of this felt like a joke I wasn't quite in on. I can appreciate some of what it was saying, got a few chuckles from it, and the style/visuals on offer, but The Love Witch did prove a bit exhausting by the end of it all. I think there's a very good 80 to 90-minute movie in there somewhere.