A woman commissions a wicker husband. The village loses its mind. That is the premise of Wicker, and somehow it is the most celebrated thing to come out of Sundance 2026. Black Bear just set the theatrical release for limited on October 23 with a nationwide expansion on October 30, and this is one I have been waiting on since January.
Olivia Colman leads the film alongside Alexander Skarsgard, Peter Dinklage, and Elizabeth Debicki. That cast alone would get me into a theater, but the material they are working with is what makes this genuinely interesting. The film adapts Ursula Wills-Jones' short story, and it is exactly as strange as it sounds. A woman in a small English village, grieving or lonely or simply tired of the way things are, commissions a life sized figure made of wicker to be her companion. The village reacts with a hostility that says far more about the community than it does about her.
I love that this exists. Folk horror has had a real moment over the last several years, with films like The Witch and Midsommar proving that audiences have an appetite for stories rooted in rural tradition and communal unease. But Wicker sounds like it is doing something slightly different. It is not about an outsider stumbling into a terrifying community. It is about a community turning on one of its own for doing something they cannot understand or control. The horror, if you can call it that, comes from the social fabric itself.
Colman is the perfect actor for this. She has that ability to play vulnerability and stubbornness simultaneously, to make you feel protective of a character while also recognizing that the character does not want your protection. Every role she takes feels like she understood something about the person that the script only hinted at. Putting her at the center of a story about a woman who refuses to perform normalcy for her neighbors is inspired casting.
The Sundance reception was strong enough that distribution was never going to be a question, but the October window is a smart choice. This is a fall film. It belongs in that stretch of the calendar when audiences are open to something that sits with them for a while.
If you like folk tales that refuse to explain themselves, that trust the audience to sit with ambiguity and find their own meaning, this is your movie. Wicker sounds like the kind of film that will have people arguing about what it actually means for months after they see it, and that is exactly the kind of conversation worth having.
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