HORROR-THON 2026 • NO EXIT
10/10
DIRECTOR: Anna Biller
STARRING: Samantha Robinson, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, Laura Waddell
RELEASED: 2016
RUNTIME: 2 hours
WATCH ON: Criterion Channel, Peacock, Screambox, Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Tubi, Pluto TV
SCARE LEVEL: Low
ACCEPTING A DRINK FROM ELAINE: Only at the tea room.
The pink Victorian tea room in this movie has lace tableclothes, a harpist in the corner, and women in hats having little sandwiches. You kinda want to move in, but then you kinda want to leave before the witch at the next table orders.
Elaine is a beautiful young witch who moves to a small town in Northern California after her husband dies under mysterious circumstances. She rents a Victorian apartment, opens up her spell kit, and gets to work on her one goal: finding a man who will love her completely.
She brews potions. She casts spells. The men fall for her, hard, and then they fall apart. It turns out the love she’s conjuring is more than any of them can handle, and the bodies start adding up.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
It looks like a 1960s Technicolor melodrama, and it was made in 2016. Honestly, if you didn’t know, you’d think it was right out of the ‘60s. Anna Biller shot it on 35mm and wrote, directed, edited, designed the costumes and sets herself. She nails the look of the ‘60s and ‘70s exploitation movies down to the lighting. Every frame is a color palette.
Samantha Robinson as Elaine has a giant false lash, a perfect cat eye, and a wardrobe I’d honestly steal piece by piece. The blue eyeshadow, the capes, and that lingerie for spellcasting? Perfect. No notes.
It’s also smarter than it looks. Elaine has been taught that being loved is the whole point of being a woman, and the movie turns that into literal poison. Something surely many of us women have felt in life.
The catch: it’s two hours, and you start to feel it. Some scenes just sit here, and the dialogue is stiff on purpose, but even then, it starts to feel long. As long as you go in for the aesthetic and vibes, not for the plot itself, you’ll have a great time.
A FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY:
While drafting The Love Witch, Anna Biller drew on relationship self-help books - specifically the advice that a woman should love a man less than he loves her - and linked it to classic cinema’s fatal lovers like Ellen in Leave Her to Heaven (1945), inspiring her creation of Elaine.