The Wicker Husband is the short story behind Wicker, the Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård fable that just opened in theaters: a lonely fisherwoman pays a basket weaver to make her a husband, and he does, out of wicker. It sounds like a joke. It plays like one of the strangest love stories of the year. Here's what the story is, what the movie adds, where you can see it, and, below a clear spoiler line, how it ends.
Is Wicker based on a book?
Yes, on a short story, not a novel. Wicker adapts Ursula Wills-Jones's "The Wicker Husband," a fable short enough to read in one sitting. That's why "the wicker husband book" searches come up short: there is no long novel to buy, and the film stretches a compact fairy tale into a full feature. Writer-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson built the feature around it (Wikipedia).
What is The Wicker Husband about?
A fisherwoman lives alone on the edge of a village that mocks her for being unmarried and for smelling of fish. She commissions the local basket weaver to make her a husband. He tells her to meet him at the chapel in a month, and on the eve of the wedding the wicker husband arrives. The marriage becomes the talk of the village.
Underneath the absurd setup is a simple romance idea: a man made specifically for one woman, who has never known anyone else and has no reason to leave. That's the golden retriever boyfriend instinct taken to its folk-tale extreme.
Who is in the Wicker cast?
- Olivia Colman as the Fisherwoman
- Alexander Skarsgård as the Wicker Husband
- Peter Dinklage as the Basket Weaver
- Elizabeth Debicki as the Tailor's Wife
- Richard E. Grant, Marli Siu and Nabhaan Rizwan in supporting roles
When does Wicker come out?
It opened in limited US theaters on October 23, 2026, and expands nationwide the week of October 30. The UK release is October 30 and Australia gets it November 5 (Variety). It premiered at Sundance in January to strong reviews (Deadline's review).
Is Wicker a romance?
Yes, a dark fairy-tale one. It isn't a rom-com and it isn't a horror movie, although the village gets ugly. The love story is the spine: a woman everyone has written off, and a husband who sees nothing in the world but her. If that's the part that got you, it sits on the same shelf as monster romance books and the stranger corners of gothic romance, where the "man" is something else entirely and the slow burn is the point.
How does Wicker end? (spoilers)
Spoilers for the film below this line.
The basket weaver doesn't stop at one creation. He later makes a wicker woman, woven from blackthorn, and her nature turns violent: the village butcher dies. In the end, the Fisherwoman, the Wicker Husband and their child leave the village together. The fable lands on the couple choosing each other over the place that never wanted them.
When the credits roll
Wicker is a short movie about a long devotion, and then the lights come up.
Swoony was built for precisely that silence. Sage, the one who stays, is our steady-hands version of the man who never leaves, and the ghost who haunts only you is for anyone who liked the not-quite-human part best. Both are closed-door and romance-only, a bond that unfolds over five stages, so the fortieth conversation feels nothing like the first.
The world stays open past the final page.
