Wicker is an endearingly deranged fairy tale of love, lust, and lattice.
Adapted from Ursula Wills’ short story “The Wicker Husband”, real-life married filmmaking team Alex Huston Fischer & Eleanor Wilson weave together an allegory about the beauty of unconventional relationships and the absurdity that happens when intolerable people decide to make it a threat to their existence.
It makes sense that a woman would prefer to marry a man who looks like a product from Pier One Imports instead of an organic, real-life human man. With the reputation of heterosexual men as of late, it is certainly the safer option of the two.
Olivia Colman dives into the role of a local fisherwoman in a quaint, yet slightly off-center medieval fairytale village where everyone has their role. She seems self-assured as she walks through town, and the townspeople openly call her a spinster—but she doesn’t just take it on the chin. The fisherwoman is happy to fire back barbs as much as she takes them.
Living on the outskirts of town, she leads a lonely life like a lyric of an Ace of Base song. Her vulnerability leads her to the town basket maker’s house (Peter Dinklage), where she pays him to make a husband out of wicker.
Wicker man (Alexander Skarsgård) is the perfect husband. He’s helpful around the house and satisfies all of her sexual desires. She gets IT when she needs it.
More importantly, she gets the love that she deserves. However, her new unconventional relationship disrupts the social order of the town, specifically the tailor’s wife (Elizabeth Debicki). An uptight I’d-like-to-speak-to-the-manager-type of “Karen” of the town, the tailor’s wife tries to convince the other townspeople that the fisherwoman’s nontraditional way of life with her fine-ass woven husband is an abomination.
There have been narratives that live in the same orbit as Wicker: Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Lars and the Real Girl, Frankenstein, Edward Scissorhands, and Pinocchio. However, a movie like Wicker hits different in 2026.
Sure, it’s really hot to see great OnlyFans wicker content, but the film is surprisingly profound when it comes to acceptance of self, shaking the status quo, and dismantling patriarchal norms.
Fischer & Wilson use the story to explore how society treats “the other” and those who decide to live outside of the “norm”. The age-old moral tale of appearance vs. worth sings through and tugs at the heartstrings as we see Colman, with all her brilliance, bring an enormous amount of care and empathy to the fisherwoman. She carries the film as Skarsgård is perfect decor, literally and figuratively.
Like the narratives before it, Wicker dives into the social stigma about unconventional relationships and the community. When communities are faced with something new, they are usually met with curiosity first and then either cautious acceptance or adamant resistance. More often than not, the dissenter makes it their goal to bring everyone else on their side. In the case of Wicker, the tailor’s wife makes it her goal to take down the fisherwoman.
A metaphor for the treatment of queer relationships, interracial relationships, polyamorous relationships, or any other type of relationships that step outside of the boundaries of run-of-the-mill, template, heterosexual relationships that follow the stringent rules of convention, Wicker encourages tolerance. It urges audiences to challenge what has been taught to be “normal”.
The townspeople look at the fisherwoman with a curious eye as she walks through town with a man on her arm who could be a long-lost brother of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. They openly judge her. They openly talk about her. They openly insult her.
First they judged her for living her life as a single fisherwoman living in isolation, and now they judge her for being happy and living the life she wants to live.
The fisherwoman can’t win.
Wicker is a reflection of how this world treats the unfamiliar. It exposes how the judgment and the intolerance of others are the result of envy and self-hatred. If you scroll through Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, there are people in this world — many of whom are world leaders, people in power, and CEOs — just can’t stand to see people happy. They see other people’s joy as a threat. Therefore, they make it a mission to dismantle happiness from the world to make everyone else as miserable as them.
The fisherwoman is a nicely woven example of a character that shows how we should stand in our truth and authenticity no matter what outside circumstances try to press on us. Wicker is also a shining example of a woman taking agency with aggressive intention and confidence.
I’m pretty sure Fischer & Wilson didn’t create Wicker as a way to promote erotic experiences with an item made of wicker (I’m not kink-shaming anyone) — but that doesn’t mean those scenes aren’t uncomfortably fun to watch. (Yes, you get to briefly see a rattan schlong).
Wild, horny, and heartfelt, Wicker is an insightfully crafted dark comedic fairytale that shows how unconventional love can shake the status quo, be unsettling for no apparent reason, but also be liberating. The fisherwoman’s wicker husband harms no one, yet the townspeople treat him as a threat; the threat was never the relationship — it’s their refusal to accept it.
