How Wicker gave its woven husband a body

The husband in Wicker appears to have been woven from reeds. For much of the film, that illusion sits on Alexander Skarsgård’s body rather than inside a computer. Wētā Workshop developed a practical suit and facial prosthetics; the gaps in the weave and the join between face and torso had to hold up at close range.

The lower half presented a different problem. When the directors decided to reveal the character’s full body, costume designers András + Attila had nine days before filming to make it—and the figure would have to go into water. Working from a form measured to Skarsgård, they cut the lower section in scuba fabric, painted the woven markings by hand, then heat-treated the surface to sit alongside Wētā’s prosthetics.

That work is easy to miss, which is its achievement. The character reads as one body because pattern cutting, paint and prosthetic makeup meet without announcing where one craft ends and another begins.