HAD ANNA BILLERā€™S The Love Witch come out in 1965, it would be part of the feminist cult-film canon. The vampy Elaine (Samantha Robinson) destroys the men in her life with sex magick (!) by more or less seducing them to death. Sheā€™s unapologetic about her passion and her witchy tendencies, she makes sexy (but murdery) paintings, and she inters a bottle of her own urine and a tampon with a dead man. Thereā€™s even a witchy Renaissance fair in the woods!

And visually, itā€™s divine: Shot on 35mm (with practical effects to boot), the film showcases Billerā€™s exquisite attention to set design and wardrobeā€”from the transformation of Los Angelesā€™ Herald-Examiner lobby into a stylized tea room to a hand-hooked pentagram rug.

But as a contemporary film, The Love Witch is lacking: While Elaine has set her feminine wiles to deadly, thereā€™s not much else to her. In fact, none of the characters are especially fleshed out or sympathetic, the pacing and plot are arduous, and the filmā€™s potential for subversion (and humorā€”jesus, itā€™s about sex magick!) is overlooked.

Had the film come out 50 years ago, we could read misandrist undertones in it, excuse its sex-obsessed protagonist from never experiencing sexual pleasure herself, and celebrate its pro-occult leanings. (Witchesā€”so hot right now!) But today, feminist filmgoers are savvy enough to expect more from female characters and messages around pleasure and sex.

Billerā€”an artist well-schooled in pulpā€”seeks to center ā€œfemale visual pleasureā€ (Ć” la film theorist Laura Mulvey), and many shots here, to be fair, are not as explicit or objectifying as the norm. But this well-intentioned exercise comes at the expense of substance. While it might be fun in a theater full of film nerds (or witches!), The Love Witch otherwise ends up being a bit of a slog.