When a basket maker constructs a wicker husband for a local fisherwoman, he proves more spectacular than she ever could have imagined. His soulful spirit and unique prowess soon awakens something inside her, setting off a wave of jealousy, fascination and upheaval that threatens the very fabric of her village.
Director: Alex Huston Fischer, Eleanor Wilson
Cast: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki, Richard E. Grant Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Gustav Lindh, Ella Bruccoleri, Ben Ashenden, Phil Daniels, Emily Lloyd-Saini
Releasing: October 23, 2026
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 64 / 100
Some Reviews:
The Film Stage - Kent M. Wilhelm - 91 / 100
Wicker amounts to a can’t-miss curiosity, adeptly weaving humor, social commentary, and a potent contemplation on the self-destructive perils of jealousy. Wilson and Fischer sum it up in a disgustingly accurate sentiment for our contentious age: “It’s easier to believe the bad than the good, isn’t it?”
Screen Daily - Amber Wilkinson - 90 / 100
The script holds plenty of satire and laugh out loud moments, but Wilson and Huston keep it supple enough to bend protectively around the central love story, while allowing the morality tale element to still have bite.
San Jose Mercury News - Randy Myers - 3.5 / 4
Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s ribald fable casts a comedic spell as it leads to a satisfying finale. You’ll have a good time with this one.
NY Post - Johnny Olesinki - 3.5 / 4
Quite like her Oscar-winning performance in “The Favorite,” Colman, who’s never afraid to act ridiculous, is untethered and batty until things get real. Or, as real as things can get when one’s hubby is an oversize vessel for potpurri.
FandomWire - Sean Boelman - 9 / 10
Wicker has a very fun premise, but what elevates the film from a novelty into something genuinely brilliant is the level of sincerity and emotion it brings to its silly, tongue-in-cheek storytelling.
Sunshine State Cineplex - Alan French - 9 / 10
In many ways, Wicker feels like medieval Edward Scissorhands, with every frame bursting to life with artistic brilliance.
The Times - Kevin Maher - 4 / 5
How good is Olivia Colman? The 52-year-old best actress Oscar winner is so good that she single-handedly elevates this “quirky medieval romp” into unexpected, even undeserved, places.
Mail - Brian Viner - 4 / 5
The pleasure of this film lies more in its substance than its message, and in the many nods to other stories about synthetic creatures, such as Frankenstein.
Digital Spy - Siddhant Adlakha - 4 / 5
As a married creative pair, Wilson and Fischer imbue the broad parable with surprising nuance, grounding it in the rankled lived experience of a woman who believes the love of her fantasy husband will cure what ails her, even though her sickness runs much deeper, and stems from a society that can't bear to see her happy. It's in learning to love herself, and accept the love she's given – again, by a stud made from wicker! – that the movie's weirdest ideas also become its most touching.
HeyUGuys - Nathan McVay - 4 / 5
Like any great fable, Wicker explores universal themes with clarity and confidence, allowing its message to emerge naturally rather than through force. This movie is unlike anything I have seen at Sundance in quite some time. It is bold, strange, romantic, and deeply human. It is the kind of film that reminds you why festivals like Sundance still matter.
Flick Feast - Katie Smith-Wong - 4 / 5
Humourously heartwarming, Wicker is nothing but conventional—and it is all the more memorable for it. Colman and Skarsgård shine in this weird yet wonderful romance, with some of the most quotable lines in cinema this year.
The Hollywood Reporter - Richard Lawson - 80 / 100
Wicker is a warming, sometimes poignant pleasure, a film full of lively personality and possessed of a rather humane outlook on our petty foibles. It is not exactly forgiving, though; the movie has a harder, more merciless edge than one might expect.
ScreenRant - Gregory Nussen - 8 / 10
Brought to life by yet another astounding performance by Olivia Colman, Wicker's treasure is in its hopeless romanticism that insists that pure love and adamant individuality can create irrevocable progress through osmosis.
Collider - Therese Lacson - 8 / 10
The magic behind how the Wicker Husband is created is both unexplored and overly explained, and while the former might be an intentional decision, the latter both weakens the film and oversimplifies the concept to the point of spoon-feeding the audience the point of the whole story. However, that being said, Wicker is still an immensely entertaining watch. The characters are fairly cookie-cutter, but the folk nature of the film doesn't make that a problem. Instead, its willingness to lean into the medieval archetypes and the bawdy humor of the time makes it unique. Without looking too closely, Wicker is a fun and quirky story about love and overcoming loneliness, and for some, that will be enough to crown the film as a success.
FirstShowing - Alex Billington - 8 / 10
Enjoyable from start to finish, wacky but entertaining & amusing in the right ways. A kooky Sundance 2026 gem worth seeking out.
NBP - Cody Dericks - 8 / 10
Wicker is a sweet, gently moving love story at its core that reminds its audience that the most effective and necessary traits for a successful relationship of any kind are simple honesty and respect.
IndieWire - Ryan Lattanzio - 'B'
Wicker threatens to feel largely like a logline writ into something grander (i.e., a short story with a wild idea stretched into a feature), but these actors are irresistibly weird and wonderful, as only they could be.
Variety - Peter Debruge - 60 / 100
The filmmaking pair don’t stray far from Wills-Jones’ intention, using the story’s unspecified time and place to poke fun at superstition, the pressures to conform and the institution of marriage...For a time, it doesn’t feel like Wilson and Fischer know what to do with the story, which stalls a bit in the second act — the part where they ought to have embellished upon what Wills-Jones had written. The plot requires the tailor’s wife to introduce doubts in the fisherwoman’s mind about her affectionate man’s fidelity. It could be a consequence of the movie’s insolent sense of humor, but there’s something unconvincing (or else too convenient) about how often the fisherwoman’s attitude changes, from caring nothing about marriage to cautiously inviting a man into her life to completely distrusting him when rumors swirl.
The Guardian - Benjamin Lee - 2 / 5
[Colman] knows how to oscillate between broad comedy and heart-wrenching drama but the film around her isn’t as adept. Like the dream husband at its centre, Wicker looks the part but there’s nothing underneath.
The Wrap - Chase Hutchinson - 40 / 100
Credit where credit is due to Wicker, it’s not every day you get to see an Oscar-winning actress mount a Hollywood heartthrob made into a literal wicker man. Alas, despite the novelty of seeing icon Olivia Colman climb a towering Alexander Skarsgård like a tree, the magical fable within which this happens is not only regrettably far less fun than this description sounds, but an oddly wearisome affair.
The Telegraph - Robbie Collin - 1 / 5
submitted by /u/ChiefLeef22Meanwhile, on the rare occasions that something does threaten to resonate emotionally – such as Debicki’s own deep-seated reasons for envying Colman’s marital happiness – Wicker loses its nerve and lapses back into whoops-a-daisy, watch-your-turnips-madam mode.
[link] [comments]