Wicker review: Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård weave a raunchy fairy tale

You might have seen the Wicker trailer, heard the plot from your friends behind giggling hands, or experienced the collective internet reaction to a 4DX screening .

We're getting another sexy straw man movie, when we thought such a thing was done For Good ? Based on Ursula Wills-Jones' short story "The Wicker Husband," the tale is what it says on the tin: a fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) requests a local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband to get the bitches in town (led by Elizabeth Debicki) off her goddamn back.

And it works, with Alexander Skarsgård brought to life as the world's most dashing straw man — apologies to Jonathan Bailey's Scarecrow in Wicked .

It's a deeply silly, fairy tale concept.

But what directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson have up their sleeve is a hilarious and heartfelt script, an incredibly talented cast, and magical production design that landed actual gasps (and cackles) from the BFI London Film Festival audience.

It's an artisanal Frankenstein tale, and one that will melt that brittle basket-woven heart of yours — or simply have you thinking about Taylor Swift's "Wood" differently.

Wicker is Frankenstein for craft lovers.

Credit: BFI London Film Festival The very concept of building a life partner from things around the house has intrigued writers from Mary Shelley to that time Sabrina the Teenage Witch's aunts played with "Man Dough." And in Wicker , a exceptionally talented basket weaver (a positively Shakespearean Dinklage) is the one to play God.

Set in a medieval village where patriarchy is divine and marriage means literally putting a collar on the bride, Wicker follows a gleeful social outsider known as the Fisherwoman (an impeccable Colman), happily living out her days in her crumbling cottage as a spinster.

Covered in the stench of her occupation, she has no desire to marry as expected.

However, such independence sparks the ire of the townspeople, especially the Tailor's Wife (a diabolical Debicki), a woman oppressed in her own man-child marriage to the Tailor (a superb Nabhaan Rizwan).

To shut them all up, the fisherwoman commissions another recluse, the Basket Weaver, to literally make her a husband.

One magic moment later, Fisherwoman has her Wicker Husband (a stoically sweet Skarsgård) — and the entire town can hear their marital bliss, echoing across the meadows.

Featured Video For You Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling reveal the hardest part of making the hot, queer romance 'Pillion' It's a sexual awakening indeed for Colman's Fisherwoman, and one that will have you cackling with glee as she does.