Not to be confused with The Wicker Man (which I spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking this was a remake of), directing duo Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s Wicker is a much more tender beast than I initially anticipated. Based on the short story “The Wicker Husband,” the film takes an unusual love story and uses it to examine the ways society scrutinizes relationships that fall outside its accepted norms. It’s a premise with plenty of potential for something strange, funny, and maybe even a little provocative, though I’m not entirely convinced the finished film gets as much out of it as it could.
Set in a medieval farming town, the story follows an unnamed fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) who lives on the outskirts of the community and is treated as an outcast because of her occupation, lifestyle, and rejection of conventional marriage expectations. In defiance of those standards, she pays a local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to create a man made entirely of wicker, whom she can love on her own terms. And love each other they do. Once Alexander Skarsgård’s wicker husband enters the picture, the film shifts from its comparatively crass opening into a more openly lewd comedy about a couple who fulfill each other emotionally and physically. Much is made of the wicker husband’s ability to satisfy his wife in bed, and while the town’s women might publicly condemn the relationship, their curiosity suggests they aren’t quite as above it all as they’d like to believe.
Of course, not everyone is willing to let the happy couple live in peace. Elizabeth Debicki is particularly good as the tailor’s wife, essentially the town’s resident pick-me girl, who cannot fathom how this supposedly undesirable woman has found happiness through such unconventional means. She turns gossip into a community-wide crusade against the couple, eventually going so far as to have a wicker baby woven and using it to frame the husband for infidelity. It’s an absurd escalation, but one that gets at the film’s central idea: sometimes, people are less bothered by the supposed wrongness of someone else’s relationship than by the fact that the people involved seem perfectly happy with it.
Despite a premise that sounds wonderfully ridiculous on paper, I found Wicker a bit dull in execution. The film finds its own comedic lane through sexual jokes and some decidedly childish humor surrounding the couple’s unusual relationship, but the comedy rarely clicked for me. Meanwhile, its thematic ambitions are fairly obvious and on-the-nose, with the film repeatedly underlining the idea that love between two people shouldn’t need to be justified to anyone else. That’s a perfectly worthwhile sentiment, but the film’s insistence on making the point leaves little room for the story to feel genuinely challenging or emotionally complicated. There’s something inherently compelling about exploring a relationship that society considers unacceptable, especially when the couple doesn’t even share the same physical makeup, but I wanted the film to do more with that tension than simply point out how unfairly they’re treated.
Skarsgård once again proves he can do just about anything, although his performance here is restrained. As a man made of wicker, he maintains such a tame, stiff presence that I couldn’t help wondering whether a livelier performance might have made the character more compelling. Then again, perhaps he had to keep himself rigid enough for the visual effects to do their thing in post-production. Either way, the performance never quite gives the relationship a unique spark that it needs, especially when so much of the film depends on the audience buying into this strange but sincere romance. Colman brings the right kind of warmth and oddball conviction to the fisherwoman, while Debicki provides a welcome source of spiteful energy, but the overall direction frames the material as a much kookier affair than it ultimately feels.
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Wicker isn’t bad, and there’s something sweet about its central relationship beneath all the sexual humor and village-wide pearl-clutching. But it’s also a bit of a “what you see is what you get” situation. The premise is stranger than the movie itself, the humor never really landed for me, and its message about unconventional love is delivered with such bluntness that it leaves little to discover beneath the surface.
Score: 5/10
Wicker (2026)
- Cast: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki, Marli Siu, Richard E. Grant
- Director: Eleanor Wilson, Alex Huston Fischer
- Genre: Comedy, Romance
- Runtime: 105 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: October 23, 2026
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