Review: "Wuthering Heights"

Emerald Fennell’s "Wuthering Heights" arrives trailing quotation marks, caveats, and an almost aggressive insistence that this is not Wuthering Heights so much as “Wuthering Heights.” From the moment it was announced, the project promised provocation: Charli XCX on the soundtrack, latex textures in the production design, and a filmmaker whose reputation was built on weaponized aesthetics and bad behavior. What it ultimately delivers is something far stranger and more disappointing, a lavish, handsome film that seems fundamentally uninterested in the most volatile elements of Emily Brontë’s novel, sanding them down until what remains is a hollowed-out tragic romance, heavy on surfaces and light on consequence.

There is no denying how beautiful Fennell’s film looks. Shot with painterly precision, the moors are windswept and ominous, interiors are drenched in texture, and Jacqueline Durran’s costumes are often stunning in isolation. Suzie Davies’ production design leans into tactile excess, skin-toned walls, and latex finishes; at times, the film feels like a Gothic fashion spread come to life. Charli XCX’s contributions to the score occasionally work in unexpected ways, injecting a modern ache into scenes of longing. On a purely sensory level, "Wuthering Heights" is often ravishing.

The trouble is that Fennell’s adaptation repeatedly chooses to disengage from what makes Brontë’s story disturbing, abrasive, and enduring. Heathcliff, so often defined by his cruelty, volatility, and capacity for violence, is here smoothed into a sad, obsessive romantic figure. Jacob Elordi brings sensitivity and physical presence to the role, but the script denies him the moral ugliness that gives Heathcliff his terrifying gravity. More baffling still is the film’s complete avoidance of Heathcliff’s racialized outsider status. In the novel, his ambiguous identity is central to how he is treated and how he understands himself; here, that dimension is simply erased, flattening both the character and the world he inhabits.

Margot Robbie’s Catherine suffers a different but equally damaging fate. By stripping away any serious engagement with her social and economic circumstances, the film reframes her defining decision, to marry Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff, as a purely personal failing. Rather than a choice shaped by class, gender, and survival in a brutally constrained society, Cathy’s actions are presented as selfishness, convenience, or cowardice. Even when Heathcliff returns wealthy, the film treats her dilemma as though she possesses genuine freedom of choice, a level of agency Brontë’s novel pointedly denies her. The result is a Cathy who comes across as bratty and self-interested rather than tragic, her complexity replaced by petulance.

Robbie and Elordi are both capable actors, but they are boxed into narrow, heightened performances that leave little room for emotional shading. Their chemistry is real, yet oddly inert, most potent when the characters are kept apart, and strangely muted when the film insists on erotic intensity. For a movie marketed as scandalous and steamy, "Wuthering Heights" is remarkably chaste. Its opening image, a man hanged to death, arousal and execution entwined under a lustful gaze, hints at an exploration of sex and mortality, but those ideas are promptly abandoned. The film gestures toward transgression without ever committing to it.

The supporting cast fares better. Martin Clunes is excellent as Cathy’s father, bringing menace and melancholy to a role the film too often plays for dark comedy. Alison Oliver provides welcome comic relief as Isabella, though her arc is rushed and emotionally incoherent. Hong Chau, as Nelly, is perhaps the film’s most telling misstep. Once a moral anchor and narrative witness, she is recast here as the primary villain, a jealous interloper whose motivations are reduced to resentment of wealth and proximity to happiness. It’s an oddly familiar move for Fennell, shifting blame downward and absolving the beautiful, damaged protagonists of their own cruelty.

By the time Wuthering Heights ends, it’s hard to escape the sense that Fennell has mistaken adornment for insight. The film is visually sumptuous, immaculately styled, and curiously empty, a story about obsession, class, abuse, and entrapment that refuses to truly engage with any of those ideas. What’s left is a half-remembered classic dressed for social media reels and mood boards, beautiful to look at and frustratingly hollow beneath the surface. For a filmmaker known for sharp edges and bad intentions, "Wuthering Heights" is surprisingly tame, all atmosphere, no bite.

2/5