THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

The weekend of new releases continues! Morgan’s been unavailable for most of the weekend due to clinicals, but she was free tonight, so we had to go see a movie. We decided to check out Wicker—because I had “checked out” everything else myself already—and I was surprised by the entire experience. I was expecting an odd, raunchy romantic-comedy, and that was definitely present, but there was more underneath the woven surface.

Admittedly, it took me a while to buy into this premise. I was thoroughly impressed by the makeup and costume design that turned Alexander Skarsgård into a basket (those Skarsgårds are always getting up to weird things), and they should totally earn an Oscar nomination for it, but I wasn’t as much a fan of the explicit sexual comedy that dominated the first act. The conversations people were having about the unconventional relationship were more my speed, though, and I definitely had some literal LOLs. Until the movie got out of its predictable sexual antics, though, was I exchanging more uncomfortable side eyes with Morgan than laughs.

I was initially concerned that the Wicker Husband had been constructed so early in the movie—I had no idea where they would take the story—but the commentary on marriage, contentment, and paranoia woven into the second half was outstanding. The Wicker Husband was such an unrealistic, ideal example of a spouse that the whole town was thrown into a frenzy, the Fisherwoman included. Her relationship with the WIcker Husband was definitely the most captivating; not even she could see through the obvious lies among the townspeople about her husband, and it nearly cost her her marriage. On that note, I absolutely hated looking at the Wicker Baby. I get how it was important to the narrative for a few reasons (the Bottlewasher’s Wife combating loneliness, and the aforementioned inflammatory lies), but man, was it scary to look at. Technically impressive, but not for me.

Finally, I loved the Basketmaker. He played God in this town to very comedic effect, and the finale he authored was a hilarious mic drop. Way to get out of the mess you made with gifts for you and a lesson for the town! Wicker was only partly what I expected, and I’m glad that the first act’s raunchiness didn’t persist for the entire movie. I couldn’t help but compare Wicker to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights upon leaving the theater. Wicker was a slightly less visually interesting (emphasis on “slightly”—still a pretty movie), more thematically resonant movie that felt like it was cut from the same cloth as Wuthering Heights. If this is the direction that the rom-com is going, I’m all about it, as long as they’re not all so sexually icky.