In terms of attention-demanding loglines, this year’s Sundance has a few. There’s the body horror Saccharine, about a diet craze that involves eating human ashes, midnight movie Buddy, about a Barney-esque kids TV star who starts murdering children and then there’s Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant which, well, you can probably imagine.
But the annual “wait, what?” prize easily goes to the offbeat fable Wicker, the story of a smelly spinster fisherwoman who commissions herself a husband made of, that’s right, wicker. While the film does have its expected amount of audience-provoking moments – wicker-fucking bringing the most noise both on and off the screen – to its credit, there’s an attempt to give us more than just easy shock value, something that can’t always be said for films in this often tedious category. Writer-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, who previously brought the mostly likable alien invasion comedy Save Yourselves! to the festival, use their far-out premise to touch upon more of-our-world issues like the patriarchal cruelty of marriage and the special fury reserved for those who dare to live outside of the accepted rules. They succeed in brief flashes but ultimately, there’s too much here that doesn’t gel, a tonally uneven mix of mostly unfunny bawdy humour, dark fantasy and unlikely romance, too much wood but not enough fire.
