REVIEW

‘WICKER’ Gives A Wicker Man a Cheeky Romantasy Makeover

Name: Wicker review
Item: Wicker
Rating: 3.7
Author: Matt Oakes

By Matt Oakes · October 21, 2026

‘WICKER’ Gives A Wicker Man a Cheeky Romantasy Makeover

The Wicker Man gets a cheeky romantasy makeover in Wicker, a fantastical romantic comedy about a lonely fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) who asks the local basketmaker to weave her a husband. Played by a singsong Peter Dinklage, who always seems on the verge of breaking into song and recites his florid dialogue as if it were Shakespeare itself, the basketmaker obliges, and a wicker man (Alexander Skarsgård) is born. He’s doting and kind-spirited, making small improvements around the home, sharing his affections and compliments, and generally being sweet on a woman the rest of the village considers an old hag. Sparks fly, which is risky business for a husband made of wicker.

In this village, no one has a name, only a profession: Fisherwoman, Baker, Tailor, Bottle Washer. And no one questions the existence of a wicker husband, or the practicality of one. There is no mention of witchcraft or magic when a basket of a man shows up at the alter one day to marry their local, smelly Fisherwoman. Instead, they all just wish they too were getting their clams shucked. Hoping their droughts could be turned to monsoons.

The Wicker Husband himself is a marvel, and astonishingly, he’s entirely practical. Realized through a full-body suit designed by Joe Dunckley and Wētā Workshop (Avatar, The Lord of the Rings), he’s a spellbinding creation. Those are clearly Skarsgård’s eyes and movements peeking through the weave, yet the effect is completely convincing: you will believe a husband can be made of wicker.

Skarsgård’s performance is warmly stiff, molded like wicker, at once robotic and childlike, an alien trying to understand the world and his new place in it. He’s honest and matter-of-fact, pure of heart and always wanting to help. He never lies; he’s a kind of inverse Pinocchio. And he’s forever whispering sweet nothings like “the load is always lighter when you are by my side,” then dutifully repairing the bed after their nights of shared affection.

Under the spell of his love, the Fisherwoman blossoms. She wears nicer clothes. She does her hair. She starts to wash so she stops smelling exclusively of fish. And the rest of the village notices. The women want their own dalliance with a wicker hard body, while the men want their wives to look at them the way they look at the wicker man.

Much of the comedy is small and farcical: the exaggerated, weary looks; a corpse dropped unceremoniously into a hole in the dirt; the wonderfully unconvincing sexual congress of the townsfolk, who, whenever they’re getting it on, barely seem to move, as if gently repositioning the furniture. Writer-directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer (Save Yourselves!), adapting Ursula Wills’ acclaimed short story “The Wicker Husband,” toss off clever jokes like they’re nothing, and nearly all of them land.

The supporting cast is fully in on the joke. Elizabeth Debicki is pure poison as the Tailor’s Wife, a vengeful small-town bully raging against the smallness of her own life, and like any bully, she can’t stand to see her usual victim get a leg up (or, in this case, a wicker-dicking down). Richard E. Grant pops in for just a single scene but is, as always, a delight, and together the ensemble conjures a whole village of nosy ne’er-do-wells.

It’s all beautifully crafted, too. Cinematographer Lol Crawley (The Brutalist) and production designer Renátó Cseh (Poor Things) conjure a medieval village that feels lived-in and storybook-iconic in equal measure, dressed in costumes by Tóth András Dániel and Attila Godena-Juhász, while Anna Meredith’s (Eighth Grade) playful score keeps the whole thing intentionally a bit off-kilter.

Beneath the smut and silliness lies a dark fable with something on its mind. As her husband begins to connect with others in town, the Fisherwoman’s jealousy and suspicion curdle, and Colman screws her mouth into odd, ill-fitting shapes that say more than any line of dialogue could. She can’t fathom why he’s so devoted to her, and frankly, neither can we. The Basketmaker insists the wicker man learned his love from her, but that explanation is about as thin as the reeds he’s woven from, and the film never lets us understand what he sees in her beyond the fact that he was made to.

That’s where Wicker raises its thorniest questions about love and loyalty, and not always to its benefit. Is devotion just subservience, or some kind of emotional shackle? Love that’s indebted is little more than slavery. Yet the film’s vision of the perfect partner (one who loves blindly, never asks questions even as he’s questioned, fixes everything and tends the home) plays less like a probing inquiry than a gender-flipped wish-fulfillment fantasy with a faintly preachy streak, and it occasionally invites an eye roll. It’s exactly the fantasy a spicy-romantasy book club of neglected wives would swoon over by candlelight. But it’s also a powder keg: with the Fisherwoman’s withering jealousy and her wicker husband’s helpless devotion, you can’t help but wonder when it will all go up in flames.

CONCLUSION: Smutty, silly, and wholly delightful, ‘Wicker’ is a delightful little village romp that weaves a hard-bodied romantasy out of a dark fable about devotion and love. Alexander Skarsgård’s astonishing practical-suit performance and Olivia Colman’s offputting but blossoming Fisherwoman make for one of the year’s oddest couples, and one of its most charming, even if its ideas about passion are woven a little thin.