Alexander Skarsgård is the selling point in Wicker, where he plays a man molded out of twigs for Olivia Colman’s character. The review treats that wicker premise as a joke with commercial bite, not just a novelty: a folk tale with enough sex, romance, and satire to sit beside current romantasy chatter.
“Reason No. 1 to watch “Wicker” is the natural intrigue of seeing Alexander Skarsgård molded out of twigs: face, arms, pecs and abs — and yes, there’s also a shot of that.” That line from the review sets the film’s value proposition plainly. The performance is built around visual absurdity, but the movie is being judged on whether that absurdity can carry a feature-length romance-drama instead of a single gag.
Olivia Colman and Peter Dinklage
Peter Dinklage plays the unnamed basket-weaver who braids Skarsgård’s character as a mate for a lonely virgin, a fisherwoman played by Olivia Colman. The review’s description makes the setup unusually direct: Colman’s character wakes the town screaming with delight after marrying the wicker spouse, and the film turns that reaction into a social event rather than a private plot beat. A separate review write-up on Olivia Colman’s viral meme turn leans on the same public-facing appeal.
Ursula Wills-Jones wrote The Wicker Husband as a 10-page short story before Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson expanded it into Wicker. That adaptation path matters because the source material is tiny, yet the film has to sustain a full-length structure around a premise that could easily run out of steam after the first reveal. The production still reads as a carefully assembled package, with Sofi Marshall on editing and Lol Crawley handling the camerawork.
Romantasy’s No. 1 problem
“Wicker’s louder point is societal.” The review uses that line to shift the film from bedroom farce to village politics, with jealousy aimed at the wicker husband and power exercised through Elizabeth Debicki’s queen bee figure. A secondary review of Olivia Colman’s script praise points to how much the cast is being used to sell the film’s tone, not just its premise.
15 worthwhile minutes is the review’s blunt estimate of how much of the film’s smutty appeal really lands, even though the setup is built around that exact charge. That is the movie’s business problem in miniature: the hook is immediate, but the feature has to earn the rest of its running time through social satire, not just novelty. The comparison to Frankenstein is doing some of that work, but the review’s complaint suggests the film may be strongest as a concept and least efficient as a payoff machine.
Wicker’s village math
Wicker lands as a mainstream folktale oddity with recognizable star power and a premise that is easy to explain in one sentence. The question the review leaves hanging is not whether the setup is memorable; it is whether the filmmakers can keep the romance, comedy, and social critique in balance once the first surprise is gone. A related piece on another returning role shows how much current entertainment coverage rewards this kind of high-concept casting, but Wicker will stand or fall on whether its twigs-made husband can keep the story moving after the first smile.
