Wicker (2026) Review: Olivia Colman's Strange Fairy Tale Earns Its 93% — a woven husband, a jealous village and a script that runs out of jokes before it runs out of heart.

Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson's adaptation of The Wicker Husband is bawdy, handmade and genuinely romantic. Critics agree on the performances; the disagreement is about whether the jokes last 105 minutes.

Wicker opened in US theaters on October 23, 2026, nine months after it premiered at Sundance. Written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, it adapts the short story The Wicker Husband: an ostracized fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) pays the village basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband, and the man he weaves out of reeds (Alexander Skarsgård) turns out to be far more than anyone in the village bargained for. Black Bear is releasing it in the US, with the UK following on October 30 and Australia on November 5.

The numbers

Critics are firmly on its side. Wicker holds a 93% Tomatometer from 94 reviews with a 7.5/10 average, a 95% Popcornmeter from verified audiences, and a 71 on Metacritic from 23 critics, which Metacritic labels generally favorable. That gap between the two critic aggregates is worth reading correctly: the Tomatometer counts how many critics liked it, while the Metascore weighs how much. Wicker is a film almost everyone liked and fewer people loved, which matches what the reviews actually say.

Why the central romance works

The film's whole bet is that you will believe a woman falling for a man made of basketry, and the reviews say the bet pays off. Liselotte Vanophem of Geek Vibes Nation wrote that finding humanity in a wicker character is no easy task, "but Skarsgård somehow pulls it off." Colman, who is also a producer, plays the fisherwoman without vanity or irony, and that sincerity is what keeps the premise from collapsing into a sketch. Inverse's Lyvie Scott put the tone bluntly: "Yes, it's horny: unabashedly, hilariously so." The R-rated frankness is not a gimmick here; it is how the film makes the relationship feel like a real one rather than a parable.

The village is the second-best thing in it

Elizabeth Debicki, as the tailor's wife whose jealousy drives the second half, gets some of the strongest notices. Joey Magidson of Awards Radar wrote that she "makes cruelty and petty jealousy an art form." Richard E. Grant's doctor and Dinklage's basket weaver round out a supporting cast that gives the village a real texture of gossip and resentment. On the craft side, Deadline's Pete Hammond singled out the production design and the Weta Workshop effects, and Screen International's Amber Wilkinson praised the sound design and practical work. The husband is a physical creation, not a digital one, and it shows.

The caveat: the script runs thin

The complaints are consistent enough to take seriously. Rotten Tomatoes' own first-reviews roundup said the 105-minute film suffers from slight pacing and script issues. Blu-ray.com's Brian Orndorf wrote that "stretchmarks are visible on the screenwriting," and Scene Now's Wael Khairy was harsher, arguing that the narrative drags and keeps circling variations of the same joke. In practice that means the first act, when the village discovers the husband, is the film at its funniest, and the middle section leans on the same reaction gag a few times too often before the jealousy plot gives it momentum again.

How it compares with this weekend's other openers

Wicker landed on a crowded October 23 slate alongside LAIKA's Wildwood, Taika Waititi's Klara and the Sun and DC's Clayface. Among those, it is the clearest option for adults who want something romantic rather than something scary: Wildwood is the critical favorite overall with a perfect Tomatometer, while Klara and the Sun, another story about loving an artificial companion, has been savaged by the same critics who embraced Wicker. Variety projected Wicker to open in about 1,471 theaters, so it is wider than a typical festival-title release.

Should you see it

If the premise makes you smile rather than wince, Wicker is very likely to work for you: the performances are the real thing, the handmade effects are a pleasure on a big screen, and the film is braver about adult romance than most studio comedies. Go in expecting a fable with a sagging middle rather than a tightly plotted comedy, and know that the R rating is earned by frank sexual humor. For viewers who found the trailer too whimsical, the reviews give no reason to think the full film plays differently.