So this is indie arthouse feminist horror comedy. Basically, it’s super low-budget stuff — Anna Biller wrote, directed, produced, did the set decoration, and made the costumes — that’s going for this very deliberate aesthetic: It’s got these saturated technicolor colors (Jacques Demy was name-checked in an interview as an influence, and you can see it), and this very mannered stiff acting that to me felt like homage to cheesy B-movies, but that Jess thought crossed the line to pastiche.

The message of the film is… tbh a little confused? (SPOILERS here.) Like, it’s clearly doing a feminist-ish thing — the titular character goes around killing dudes with love potions, and it’s got some of that revenge fantasy feel to it, as they’re all repulsive guys (one is a professor who was hitting on a student; another is a married man who’s cheating on his wife). But then like, it’s using this “men just want sex, and women want love” undertone that I don’t think it’s subverting so much as reinforcing: the men all die because she gives them a love potion and they start acting stereotypically female and moon for her and stuff. Which okay, but that kind of inversion is kind of taking the stereotype for granted, you know?

ALSO, the witch stuff gets played really straight in a kind of weird way. Like, yes, there’s some horror-movie witchiness to it, but it’s also a lot of Ren Faire Wicca type stuff that felt kinda bizarre, with some New Agey feminist notes underlying that, too. But mostly it’s just this unexpected mish-mash of styles, to go from a kind of ’70s gothic horror to people playing lutes and wearing tights.

At any rate, I thought it was visually fascinating, had an interestingly weird aesthetic, and was consistently entertaining, and I’m still not sure what I think about it (we watched it Friday, and I’ve had this write-up marinating), which is a good sign in itself. This is on the Criterion Channel as part of a collection of Biller’s movies, and I kinda want to check the others out now.