Wicker’s 4DX Screening Turns a Bed Scene Into a Times Square Event
Olivia Colman’s folk-horror romance Wicker brought an unexpected crowd to a 4DX screening in Times Square. The moving seats and sensory effects built toward a…
At a sold-out 4DX screening in Times Square, Wicker’s bed-breaking scene sent the audience screaming at a level compared with a Taylor Swift concert. The unlikely fit between Olivia Colman’s folk-horror romance and the ride-like cinema format became the event’s main attraction.
The film puts Colman’s Fisherwoman in love with a wicker-man husband played by Alexander Skarsgård. Its screening at Regal Cinemas drew chants of “we want the wick!” from the crowd, as moving seats and sensory effects gave the film’s unusual romance a rowdy new setting.
Why did Wicker get a 4DX screening?
Wicker was not an obvious choice for 4DX. The format, introduced in the US in 2014, has largely suited action films, where chases and battles translate naturally into motion, wind and water effects.
Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson made the relatively small-budget film, a medieval love story that drew attention after its Sundance debut in January. Its village-bound characters spend much of the movie walking around, rather than racing in vehicles or riding horses.
The film’s promised bed-breaking sex scene offered a different kind of spectacle. Jokes about screening it in 4DX circulated on social media and Letterboxd, and distributor Black Bear embraced the idea by arranging a special screening.
The event was initially planned as one night only. Black Bear extended it to a full week after demand, with the Times Square screening sold out, according to the account of the event.
What did the 4DX effects add?
For much of Wicker, the seats had little to respond to. The experience instead brought small jolts: a door knocking into a viewer’s back, a gentle bump during a river scene and moisture splashing as the Fisherwoman empties a chamberpot outside.
The sensory effects were not all literal. The scent programmers spared the audience the odor often mentioned in the film, while the seats saved their biggest contribution for the couple’s consummation scene.
That payoff turned the screening into a communal comedy experience. The audience was tossed with the Fisherwoman as the wicker husband’s shoulders tightened, and the movement sharpened the absurdity of the scene rather than simply echoing an action sequence.
One attendee had brought a homemade wicker basket, carried by friends helping her get over a breakup. The detail captured the playful mood around a film whose central romance already hinges on a woman falling for a basket-like husband.
4DX had previously found a natural match in films built around storms and spectacle. The account described Twisters, released in the summer of 2024, as an example: wind and rain effects made its tornado story more immersive. Wicker took a less obvious route, using motion to amplify awkwardness and laughter.
The screening also showed how a format associated with action can find an audience through a film’s most talked-about scene. For Black Bear, the week-long event offered an unusual theatrical draw around a movie that otherwise gives the chairs little to do.
The scene’s response was loud. It produced “screams on the level of a Taylor Swift concert.”
