Wicker (2026) – Review by Andrea Carnevali

Wicker

⭐⭐½

An inventive premise and lovely production design can’t disguise a repetitive, rather simplistic fairy tale

Am I missing something?

Because I came out of Wicker feeling rather baffled. Not so much by the film itself, which is actually fairly straightforward despite its bizarre premise, but by the extraordinary enthusiasm surrounding it. Critics seem to be falling over themselves to praise it, and yet I found it repetitive, predictable and, dare I say it, a bit boring.

And believe me, I wanted to like it.

The premise is certainly original. Olivia Colman plays a foul-smelling, foul-mouthed Fisherwoman living in a medieval village, clearly in a parallel universe, where women are expected to marry, obey their husbands and generally know their place (at their wedding they are presented with a chain around their neck instead of a ring… Yes, the film is that subtle!). The Fisherwoman is more of an outsider, mocked by the community for being unmarried and for not “conforming”.

One day she visits a local Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage), a sort of medieval Geppetto with magical powers, and commissions herself a husband… made of wicker.

Yes, you read that correctly.

And when her new husband shows up, in the rather magnificent shape of Alexander Skarsgård, he turns out to be everything the other men in the village aren’t: handsome, sensitive, attentive, understanding, helpful around the house and, apparently, absolutely sensational in bed (surely he can never go “limp”).

Directed by married filmmaking duo Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, Wicker is adapted from The Wicker Husband, a short story by Ursula Wills-Jones. Originally a rather simple fable about jealousy and envy, the story has been considerably expanded for the screen, particularly the relationships between the villagers and the romance at its centre.

It is essentially a feminist fairy tale about a woman who refuses to accept the role society has imposed on her and ends up finding happiness on her own terms.

And I’m absolutely fine with that. In fact, I’m all in favour of films about female empowerment. What I find increasingly tiresome, however, is when that empowerment comes at the expense of male characters who are little more than cardboard caricatures. It’s one of the reasons I couldn’t stand Barbie, and I found myself having similar reservations here.

Pretty much every man in the village is selfish, insensitive, stupid or generally useless. Their wives are unhappy, unfulfilled and sexually frustrated. Then along comes a husband made of wicker who demonstrates what a “decent man” should be like.

Fine. We get the joke.

But then the film keeps making it. Again… And again.

There is, of course, still plenty to say about inequality, gender expectations and the way men and women relate to one another. But surely, in 2026, we can find something a little more interesting to say than that insensitive men make terrible husbands and women deserve better? I kept waiting for the satire to develop, for the film to take us somewhere unexpected. Instead, it seemed content to repeat the same rather obvious observations, while the villagers become increasingly jealous of the Fisherwoman’s perfect marriage.

And here’s a question from me: what if the roles had been reversed?

Imagine a film in which a lonely man commissions a beautiful woman whose sole purpose is to love him, satisfy him sexually, do the housework, understand his emotional needs and never really ask for anything in return.

I suspect we’d be having a rather different conversation about that film. And quite rightly so.

Also, there’s a much more interesting question that the film rather conveniently avoids: does the wicker husband actually have free will?

He’s been created specifically to love this woman. But is his devotion really love? Or simply the fulfilment of the purpose for which he was created?

Can he choose not to love her? Does he have desires of his own? Is he allowed to say anything negative? And would their relationship still be considered so wonderful if he wasn’t quite so perfectly accommodating?

The film barely touches on this, and then quickly and neatly sidesteps the problem, apparently not interested in questioning the romantic fantasy it’s too busy celebrating.

And that’s a shame, because there’s a fascinating, potentially much darker and, in my view, far more interesting film hiding somewhere in that premise.

Instead, we get a lot of broad, sometimes rather crude comedy, increasingly repetitive situations and a love story that, I’m sorry to say, never particularly moved me.

And I think that’s my biggest problem with Wicker.

The film wants to be both a bawdy farce and a touching fairy tale about two outsiders finding love, but I never felt the filmmakers managed to balance those two strands particularly well.

By the time the occasional tender moments arrived, I’d already become so detached from the characters (and a bit bored too) that they simply didn’t register with me emotionally.

There are obvious echoes of Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning The Shape of Water, another beautifully crafted fantasy about a lonely woman falling in love with a non-human creature. That’s another film I had some problems with, although at least del Toro seemed more committed to making its central romance emotionally believable.

Here, I struggled to care.

Colman is an actress who can usually melt my heart like butter, but here I found her rather annoying right from the start. I understand that the Fisherwoman is supposed to be vulgar, defiant and unconventional, but that doesn’t automatically make her interesting or sympathetic.

Yes, Alexander Skarsgård does bring a lot of humanity to a character who’s essentially a walking basket, but not enough to move me, make me care or engage with it.

Visually, the film is lovely. The production design, costumes, locations and extraordinary wicker creations give it a lovely tactile, handcrafted quality. In fact, there’s real imagination in the world the filmmakers have created, and I certainly can’t fault its ambition. But the original premise isn’t enough.

At 105 minutes, Wicker feels like a short story stretched well beyond its natural length. And despite expanding the original material quite a bit, it doesn’t feel like the filmmakers have found much more to say.

Once you’ve understood the central joke and the rather obvious message behind it, the film just seems to keep repeating itself. The pacing is uneven, the writing surprisingly thin, and the story increasingly predictable.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps I’m expecting too much from what is essentially a whimsical, slightly naughty fairy tale about love, acceptance and the freedom to be different. And clearly, judging by the overwhelmingly positive response, plenty of people have found it funny, charming and genuinely moving.

I wish I had.

But I can’t help feeling that underneath all the eccentricity and outrageous, blush-inducing humour, Wicker is surprisingly simple. Just a bizarre premise trying to be provocative.

And for a film that seems so determined to challenge traditional ideas about relationships, I found it remarkably unwilling to challenge its own.