If there’s one line that perfectly encapsulates the odd appeal of Wicker, it’s when a basket weaver played by Peter Dinklage remarks on what he has created: “I did not build you fuckable furniture.” Directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson have not just made a horny romance about a woman having sex with a man composed of wicker. A lesser film would’ve coasted on that crafty appeal alone and let the strangeness of the sex scenes carry the picture, based on the short story The Wicker Husband. But Fischer and Wilson also penned a script that is hilarious in its bluntness and thoughtful in its societal questioning of gender dynamics and repressed desires. It’s a wonderfully weird monster movie that can have its medieval cheesecake and eat it too.

Set in a small medieval town, the fish-selling spinster played by Olivia Colman finds herself longing for something more. She watches the town adhere to its absurd traditions of marriages between uncaring men and gossipy women. As a lark, the fisherwoman tosses some coin to the basket weaver for him to build her a husband. Remarkably, a man bound by wicker ends up not as decor, but as a wicker-bound soul played by Alexander Skarsgård. This artificially made man turns out to be not only the man this lonely woman desires, but what every woman desires. Here is a man who will bring her to bed for a night of passionate sex that breaks the bed and immediately proceeds to fix the broken bed. Although versatile in the bedroom and with tools, he’s also gentle and empathetic in how he interacts with the rather harsh scrutiny of the town.

Friction grows in the town as the citizens grow annoyed by how perfect a relationship the fisherwoman has with her wicker husband. Elizabeth Debicki plays the wife of a tailor who thinks she has the whole town under her thumb, but finds her fingers being bitten by a more confident fisherwoman she once looked down upon. Ben Ashenden plays a baker who has grown frustrated with how this assembled man makes every other male look pathetic by comparison, given the lack of challenges to their misogynistic personalities. Men want to burn him and women want to bang him. It is a strange community, made all the stranger by the terrible doctor played by Richard E. Grant, who loses patients over mere foot injuries.

With its historical setting and unorthodox premise, the film is well aware of its appeal and doesn’t shy away from its bawdy allure. Characters will often try to put some modest grace on their language before eventually relenting, where eloquent words of jealous passion quickly boil down to direct declarations of fucking. Even Peter Dinklage’s more contemplative role, with his solo monologues debating the worth of life, still resorts to refreshing bluntness. After all, the strangeness of a wicker resident isn’t something that would inspire poetic pontifications from a community bound in filthy abodes and archaic rituals.

Yes, Olivia Coleman does have sex with a wicker-rendered Skarsgård. Quite a bit and quite early. It’s pleasing that the film skips the winding foreplay, as it can explore the more fascinating aspects of this scenario, beyond what a wicker penis looks like. For as comical as the town is played up to be, it does serve as a timely allegory of what happens when feelings inadequately stew in the hearts of men and women. The man of wicker is recognized as a danger to the community more for his thoughtful nature than for being too flammable to invite to a bonfire. Dependency emerges when a walking mass of fibers has more humanity than flesh and blood. This leads to a dire desperation in the town to either prove themselves better or retreat to the gentler touch of souls unbound by ego. And for as intriguing as this story turns out to be, it’s also hilarious for its tongue-in-cheek dialogue and willingness to go into odd places, especially when rumors of an affair with the wicker man spread throughout the town.

Wicker is horny and hilarious in all the wildest ways one could conceive of in a film this unorthodox. I expected some absurdity, but the way it was woven into a surprisingly emotional and thoughtful story made it all the more alluring. It’s the type of film that you smirk at the first time Coleman jumps into bed with her wicker-made husband, but stay transfixed to see what happens after such a honeymoon. As with any romance movie, the sex scenes are only as attractive as the characters engaging in them. Thankfully, plenty of tenderness beats beneath the special effects coating Skarsgård’s body. Come for the wicker sex, stay for the wicker heart.