It’s a simple premise, really: a fisherwoman, deemed ugly by her village of judgy idiots, saves up enough coin to ask the local magical basketweaver to make her a husband. A month later, he delivers a willow-woven hunk, wholly and completely devoted to her needs. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.
The short story “The Wicker Husband” was first published in 2008 in an online journal by Ursula Wills-Jones, and is now a horny feature film starring Olivia Colman as the fisherwoman and Alexander Skarsgård as the Wicker Husband.
Before you see the film, you might want to read the short story for comparison. Tor Books recently picked it up for traditional publishing in the United States. It’s currently available as an e-book with a background introduction by the author, and as an audiobook under the same title as the film. It will also be released in hardcover in April 2027, bound with a collection of Wills-Jones's other short stories.
So how do the two differ? What’s remarkable about the one-hour-and-forty-five-minute film is how closely it follows the short story, which clocks in at 26 pages in e-book form. Much stays the same: the village people, the plot, and the fairy-tale-esque lack of logical explanation for a wicker husband's existence. The overarching themes of jealousy, societal and cultural disruption, otherness, and authentic love remain.
Peter Dinklage is the Basket Weaver
The film builds on the story's foundation with strokes of humor and eroticism. There is no mention of explicit sex in the original story—but the film’s marketing has leaned heavily on the sex appeal of a Wife Guy vaguely shaped like Skarsgård, woven from willow. It’s not enough onscreen sex for some fans, though, who have already taken to TikTok to complain about the lack of “full-frontal wick.” The sex scenes are wrapped in comedy here—from the rickety bed breaking underneath them to the sound of wicker creaking as it expands and hardens. Wicker is a step in the right direction for fans of monster romance and sentient-object romance, but it won’t satisfy the horniest among them.
The film strays furthest from the story in how it fleshes out tertiary characters like the Tailor’s wife, the Baker Woman, and the Innkeeper’s wife. It paints a picture of the bleak reality of many traditional marriages in a patriarchal society—one where women are expected to live a life devoid of pleasure and partnership, physical and otherwise. As you get to know the townspeople better, their growing jealousy of the fisherwoman and her husband feels earned. Who wouldn’t become jealous? Who wouldn’t turn to desperation? As the viewer, aren’t you jealous too?
Spoiler warning ahead. When the wicker wife is delivered in the short story, the Butcher’s Wife tussles with her on the ground after catching her kissing (though really mauling) her husband. At the end of the short story, the village men, enraged by the basketmaker's deception, gather their pitchforks, knives, and shears to hunt him. An angry mob, out for blood, only to discover the basketmaker, fisherwoman, and her wicker family have vanished. In the film, the Butcher’s Wife sees her husband being mauled and simply … lets it happen. Point, women. The villagers do too, slowly turning their backs on the bloody scene before them. It ends the same way, though this unlikely family isn’t on the run. They leave on their own terms. It’s a justified, happier ending for women and magical wicker people everywhere.
Wicker is currently available as an audiobook, an e-book, and in select theaters.