Wicker (2026) Movie Review: Where are the hobbits?
Wicker Review
Ahh yes.
The classic human experimentation tale. Wicker seems an odd choice for a human exoskeleton. We’d prefer scales.
Dr. Tuna warned us about this horror story of the fisherwoman who captured our distant cousins for financial gain. But, bloop, this takes place in The Shire, well before humans and fish became allies.
Not much to spoiler here, so we’ll just list the pros and cons:
WARNING! ENTERING SPOILER-INFESTED WATERS!
(We’ll let you know when it’s safe to swim back to the surface.)
BLOOP!
Pros
- Everything a movie can do right, especially the human experimentation.
Cons
- Fish endangerment.
- Fish entrapment.
- Fish filleting.
- Fish trafficking.
WICKER ENDING EXPLAINED:
After the Wickerman (Alexander Skarsgård) kept everybody up past their bedtime while pleasing his fish-capturing, fish-murdering bandit of a wife (Olivia Colman), the town easily became envious of the tackle-box nymphomaniac.
Recently widowed Willow (Ella Bruccoleri, who was clearly questioning her agent’s life choices) decides to conceive a wicker baby through the conventional way: paying the basket maker (Peter Dinklage) to perform another human test subject experiment.
We like this human basket maker!
Now that Willow’s sister (Marli Siu) finds out about the baby, she decides to trick the marine-life abuser into thinking her human experiment was “making pizzas” behind her back, and she casts the wicker man out of The Shire.
Many spells go by, and she lives in agony for what she’s done to us fish, weeping at our doorstep. Until… she finds the wicker baby, who was abandoned by Willow.
Basket man pays the fish abuser a visit and reunites her with the love of her life: the one she cast out, the walking, talking wicker basket man.
Cleverly, the human basket maker offers the townspeople a parting gift for his own retirement, but in return, he requires a parting gift. Whoever provides him with the best gift will be rewarded with a wicker woman.
(Note to self: find this basket maker—”employ” him immediately.)
All of the town’s five people showed up to win this new wicker woman.
One member baked a retirement cake out of pancakes. Another offered him jars—which obviously contained some highly fermented, questionable booze. Someone offered an uncomfortable-looking chair. And for sure, the clear winner was going to be Dr. Daughter (Elizabeth Debicki), because she offered him pirates’ booty.
But wait!
A new townsman enters the contest, and the winner was the obvious choice. The mysterious newcomer steps up and gives the basket maker a gift card—the gift that never fails.
BLOOP!
Unveiling this new human test subject, she appears to be made out of an experiment with a porcupine and some other twigs found in the woods. A beautiful monstrosity indeed.
This revelation is the ultimate revenge on the townspeople for what they’ve done to the gill-hating oppressor, and the errors of their ways are made aware to them, leaving the basket maker, the fish murderer, and the human test subject to live happily ever after. Or perhaps, they’re off to join Frodo on his merry quest to Mount Doom. But what do we know? We’re just fish.
(Second Note: Seriously, find the basket maker’s updated location stat! Uni Fish #1 is getting impatient.)
SPOILER FREE ZONE: SWIM BACK
Despite the graphic images of fish brutality, this film is definitely award-worthy in many categories.
FISHY FUN FACT:
Did You Know?
Before becoming a feature film starring Alexander Skarsgård and Olivia Colman, Ursula Wills-Jones’s original 2006 short story, The Wicker Husband, was actually adapted into an award-winning stage musical in the UK back in 2020.
Article by Dee Jay Fish
