Vivid colors, a Victorian apartment overflowing with candles and potions, a stunning woman who looks like she stepped out of a technicolor film from the 1960s, and men falling one after another under her spell. At first glance, The Love Witch seems to treat witchcraft as little more than stylish, exaggerated set dressing. But beneath this carefully crafted surface lies a subtler layer: many of the magical details in the film weren’t simply invented by the director.

American director Anna Biller spent years reading about modern witchcraft, talking to practitioners, and attending classes and rituals. She even considered joining one of its traditions herself at one point. The result is a film that blends cinematic fantasy with practices drawn from Wicca and European folk magic, though it doesn’t aim to faithfully document any specific religion or ritual.

A woman determined to be loved at any cost

Released in 2016, The Love Witch was written, directed, and visually designed in large part by Biller. Samantha Robinson stars as Elaine, a young woman who believes finding a man to love her is her life’s mission.

Elaine moves to a new town and begins luring men, using her allure, magical rituals, and potions. But what’s supposed to lead her to love gradually turns into something else; the men she desires don’t live up to her fantasies, and her longing to be loved spirals into obsession and a series of tragic consequences.

The official synopsis describes Elaine as crafting spells and potions in search of the perfect man, only to discover that her magic works a little too well—her desperate need for love eventually drives her to madness and murder. According to the film’s distributor, the story uses this premise to explore female fantasy and the dangers of pathological narcissism.

But if we limit ourselves to this psychological reading, we miss one of the film’s most intriguing aspects: where did Elaine’s rituals come from?

Biller wasn’t interested in 'Hollywood magic'

When asked about her research, Anna Biller explained that she read extensively, spoke with witches and practitioners, attended rituals and classes, and even experimented with solo practice while preparing the film. In another interview, she said she wanted to research as if she were actually planning to join this world, and that her deep dive into the subject made the scriptwriting process much longer as she kept searching for new details.

This explains why The Love Witch stands apart from so many films that use pentagrams, cauldrons, or spellbooks as little more than generic horror symbols.

Biller wanted, in her words, for real practitioners to watch the film and recognize something authentic, even if Elaine’s world remains highly stylized and theatrical. In fact, some actual witches participated in the coven scenes, initially hired as extras, they turned out to have genuine connections to these practices.

Gardnerian and Alexandrian influences in the film

The clearest source for the rituals was Wiccaa  modern pagan religion that emerged publicly in Britain in the twentieth century. Contrary to some popular myths, it isn’t a direct continuation of an 'ancient witch religion.'

Biller specifically referenced two traditions: Gardnerian Wicca, founded by Gerald Gardner, and Alexandrian Wicca, which was developed later in the 1960s by Alex and Maxine Sanders. Alexandrian Wicca drew on Gardnerian roots but incorporated elements from ceremonial magic and other sources.

Biller made it clear that the film features two rituals, one inspired by the Gardnerian tradition and the other by the Alexandrian. She imagined that the priest and priestess in Elaine’s coven each came from different backgrounds, allowing her to blend various elements within the group.

So when we see the ritual circle, the costumes, the symbols, and the dynamic between the priest and priestess, it’s not just cinematic invention. Instead, it’s a selective recreation of ideas the director had seen or read about.

However, this doesn’t mean the film offers an accurate religious portrayal of Wicca or that Elaine’s behavior reflects the beliefs of its followers. Elaine is an extreme character, created primarily to serve a story about love, desire, and power.

The Witch Bottle: A Disturbing but Historical Detail

One of the film’s strangest scenes shows Elaine preparing a bottle filled with personal and bodily materials. It’s easy to assume Biller invented this detail just to shock the audience, but this is actually one of the most fascinating aspects of her research.

When asked about the scene, Biller explained that witch bottles are a real part of folk tradition. Using items directly connected to the body or their owner was based on the belief that these materials held a special link to the person. She confirmed that the idea for the bottle came from her historical research.

Archaeological evidence supports the existence of this practice. Researchers in Britain have found containers, especially from the 17th and 18th centuries, filled with pins, nails, hair, fingernails, and bodily fluids. These bottles were sometimes hidden under floors or near fireplaces. Historical studies suggest they were often used as protective magic, intended to shield someone from witchcraft or to reflect harm back onto whoever was believed to have caused it.

It’s important to note, though, that witch bottles predate modern Wicca and aren’t originally a Wiccan practice. They belong more to the traditions of folk magic and "counter-magic" in early modern Britain.

So, The Love Witch doesn’t depict a single, unified magical practice. Instead, it weaves together elements from different eras and traditions to create Elaine’s world.

From Protection to Control

Here, Biller made a clever dramatic choice. Historically, witch bottles were mostly associated with protection from magic or attempts to break harmful spells. In Elaine’s world, however, the magical substance becomes part of a scheme to attract and dominate another person’s desire.

This gap between historical origins and cinematic use is significant. The film isn’t simply saying, “This is what witches actually do.” Instead, it borrows the physical language of magic bottles, herbs, personal items, symbols, ritual circles and redirects it toward the film’s central question:

What happens when someone no longer wants to be loved freely, but instead wants to force another person to love them?

At this point, love magic A metaphor for control.

Sexual allure in satanic witchcraft

Biller’s influences go beyond Wicca. In an interview about the film, she was specifically asked about the dialogue referencing the use of sexual attraction and glamour to influence men, and whether it drew from The Satanic Witch by Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan.

Biller confirmed that this part of the script was indeed inspired by LaVey, but she connected it to a broader idea she wanted to explore: that sexuality and allure can give women a form of power, but can also become a prison, forcing them to constantly shape themselves to fit others’ desires.

Eileen’s character is deliberately contradictory, she appears powerful because she can seduce men, but her sense of worth is almost entirely dependent on her ability to make a man love her.

She’s a witch who controls others, yet she’s also trapped by a larger spell herself.

Is there real magic in the film ?

Ironically, despite all her research into witchcraft, Biller said she never intended to make a film centered on the supernatural. In one interview, she explained that she wanted the rituals to feel authentic, but she wasn’t interested in showing a world where supernatural powers are overtly real. This leaves the film intentionally ambiguous.

Do the men die because Eileen’s potions actually have magical power ? Or is it because they’re drawn into a world of desire, intoxication, illusion, and psychological collapse ? The film doesn’t need to prove magic exists for its ideas to work—the real spell might not be in the chalice at all. It could be Eileen herself.

Even the visuals are part of the spell

Biller used cinematography, color, and lighting to make the film itself feel seductive to the viewer. She said she didn’t just want the witch to cast spells within the story, she wanted the film to cast its own kind of 'magic' on the audience through cinematic techniques.

That’s why Eileen’s face looks almost unrealistically flawless, the costumes are meticulously coordinated, and the screen is awash in reds, pinks, and purples. Some scenes feel like they belong in a lost Technicolor film from the 1960s.

The film was even shot on 35mm film, and Biller deliberately revived old-school lighting and camera techniques instead of just using a digital filter to create a retro look.

In this way, the film’s aesthetic is directly tied to its themes: just as Eileen crafts herself into the image she thinks men want, the film itself is crafted to be so visually beautiful that it almost conceals what’s happening beneath the surface.

The Love Witch isn’t a lesson in Wicca

It’s a mistake to treat The Love Witch as a guide to Wiccan practices, just as it would be wrong to assume everything in it was invented by Hollywood. The truth lies somewhere in between.

Some rituals are openly borrowed from Gardnerian and Alexandrian traditions, others from historical folk magic, and there are influences from Western writings on magic, sexuality, and allure , alongside a healthy dose of cinematic invention and reinterpretation.

That’s exactly what makes the film so fascinating from the perspective of occult studies: it’s a rare example of a movie that began with real research into magical practice, but didn’t stop there.

Anna Biller used this story not to explore whether spells actually work, but to examine what happens when love shifts from a relationship between two people to an attempt to bend one person’s will to another’s.

From this perspective, the most dangerous spell in The Love Witch isn’t a potion, a bottle, or a magic circle, it’s the belief that drives Elaine from the very beginning:

If someone doesn’t love me the way I want, I have to make them.