Near Hypnotism or aesthetic excess

More reviews of Wuthering Heights 2026

The feeling that lingers long after is one of near hypnotism. The slow burn of Wuthering Heights not only reflects the pace of life of 18th-century England more realistically, but it also allows the pain and emotional weight of Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship to fester and build over time.So despite ongoing debates about whether Fennell dilutes or distorts Brontë’s legacy, the film feels less like a rework, and more like excavation of the discomforting elements that underscore one of society’s most beloved romances. Strip away the spectacle, the couture, the discourse, and what remains is clear: a love story not of destiny, but of pure destruction. Whatever our souls are made of, Fennell demands it be known. (Danisha Liang in Vogue Singapur)

The maximalist adaptation of the gothic romance shows great interest in production design but very little in character. 

For all its aesthetic excess – and though I may not agree with Fennell’s vision, I will defend its intemperance – there’s a strange small-mindedness to this adaptation, a failure of romantic imagination. I am as susceptible as anyone to overwhelming loudness, for being so smacked in the face with sublime audiovisual stimulation that it turns my brain off. (Coincidentally, the best music by Charli xcx, who composed the film’s soaring, synth-y soundtrack, does this in spades, and I include the movie opener House in that.) But the problem with hinging a film on self-destructive eroticism is that it requires a self to destruct – the messy, confusing, contradictory substance of desire. Otherwise, it’s just dress-up. (Adrian Horton in The Guardian)

 Where consumerism overpowers Yorkshire winds. (...) 

Either way, my impression was that Margot Robbie’s corsets were not tight enough to convey the Gothic suffocation of Brontë’s novel. More crucially, I fear the Yorkshire winds stand no chance against the sweeping forces of consumerist intrigue. (Ivett Berényi in The Oxford Student)

Dark comedy and sexual symbolism abound in a fiercely feminine film with a pop video aesthetic. It’s knowingly silly at times, but it also delivers an intense reminder of the first flushes of love, a vivid sense of loss and longing, and a career-best performance from Martin Clunes, who plays Cathy’s father. 

Outrageous, naughty fun. (Anna Smith in Saga)

Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ adaptation strips the novel of its racial, regional, and class dynamics, producing an empty spectacle emblematic of the erasure of working-class voices from the arts. (...)

Worse still is Wuthering Heights’ empty Northern soul. The Moors scenes, filmed on the Dales, feel too tame and bright. The townsfolk only feature briefly; when they do, they are ‘sexual deviants’ who get off at the sight of a hanging man’s post-mortem erection. While Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange are immaculately designed, the surrounding land and town feel so generic that Fennell’s film might as well be set anywhere in Victorian Britain. (Katie Tobin in Tribune Magazine)

 Wasted potential and poor creative choice holds Fennell's 'Wuthering Heights' back from glory. (...)

Overall, while I had fun – and the core performances are well acted – there isn’t enough in this film for me to cling to.

The film can linger in scenes and subplots that feel inconsequential to the meatier themes that could be explored so well in a modern light, and that with the aforementioned blabbering above in the end just made it hard for me to connect with the film.

I found it hard to connect to the emotions of regret, loss of time, lack of action that it is trying to explore, let alone the commentary on the class system and the boundaries of the time. (Luis Daly in Stratford Observer) 

While "'Wuthering Heights'" is a beautiful movie, it falls short in reaching its audience in the same way the novel does because it sacrifices the core of the plot to tell a story that borrows the characters of the novel but cannot portray them sincerely. (Demiana Ghobrial in Daily Titan)

If I was to describe Wuthering Heights in a succinct way I’d say two-dimensional. 

The world was bright and sprawling, and used its budget to the fullest. 

But did the film truly make me feel anything? Not really. 

It was a story that I could fortunately look at, but sadly couldn’t touch.

It was fine overall and completely beautiful, but I daren’t say I’d ever think of these characters over their counterparts from 1847. (Kaya Şentürk in Harrogate Advertiser)

Although I found myself occasionally wondering if more would happen regarding the story, I absolutely want to rewatch this film for the visuals alone. Beautiful and unforgettable. I was particularly a fan of Alison Oliver as the eclectic, slightly psychotic, absolutely deranged Isabella Linton. She was so sweet and scary. I just don’t believe Emily Brontë was as horny as Emerald Fennell was when making this movie. I don’t know if that opinion will make you want to see the film more or less. But I think it’s worth a watch either way. (Nattia Jones in MkauGaming)

 The film doesn’t capture the same emotional layers and social commentary of the novel, and can feel a bit “surface.” However, it’s also worth cutting through all of the debates, controversy and complaints of deviations from Brontë’s work and giving it a watch to form your own opinion. The lavish visuals, the romantic plot (which can be genuinely moving toward the end), the sex sex sex- for an escapist romp in the doldrums of February, it’s not a bad shout. (Rufus Punt in The Handbook)

 “Wuthering Heights” is a movie about two people who deserve each other. At first, this can be said with positive connotations that slowly turn to negative. Because there are so many erotic scenes with the main characters in fancy costumes, this movie is supposedly “romantic.” I’m worried about what young romantics will take away from this movie, considering how many of them came out of last year’s “Nosferatu” with a crush on Count Orlok. I walked away from this film wanting both main characters to fall from a height – Wuthering or otherwise. (Bob Garver in Kiowa County Press)

 Just as online pornography has molded a generation of young men’s sexual preferences, Ms. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is the logical conclusion of a female heterosexuality based not in real-life men, but fictional ones. When increasing shares of young people are completely sexless, it’s hardly surprising that young women are drawn to these books. What, after all, is the point of a sexually explicit, BDSM-inflected “Wuthering Heights” but to turn a classic novel into yet another work of spicy fan fiction? Ms. Fennell’s film is successful enough when judged as an adaptation of an erotic bodice-ripper, but it has none of the charm—and power—of Brontë’s original. (Emma Camp in Wall Street Journal)

 Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is haunted by nothing. 

‘Wuthering Heights’ lays traps for the audience, inviting them to search for meanings that are not there. (Charlie Lewis in Crikey)

"Every generation gets the Wuthering Heights it deserves. And Emerald Fennell’s is for the always-online" says Nadia Khomami in The Guardian: 

 Still, when I saw it on Friday night, the cinema was packed. There were squeals, gasps and, yes, tears. It was an entertaining fever dream, with beautiful cinematography and a final sequence that leaves you devastated. When fewer people are going to film theatres, it should be welcome that “Wuthering Heights” has recouped its $80m production budget on its opening weekend. Event cinema  sells tickets.
Luckily, Brontë fans who can’t abide this film have countless alternatives that cleave more faithfully to the novel’s spirit, including the 1939 version with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, 1992’s take with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes and Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film. They should also be reassured that the controversy around the film has driven renewed interest in the book itself, with UK sales up 469% over the past year. That is one good thing Fennell lovers and haters can agree on.

Adam White in The Independent has real problems making up his mind about the film, or Emerald Fennell, or anything, really: 

‘Wuthering Heights’, then, is Emerald Fennell unleashed, a marvellously asinine exercise in style and panache, both as sumptuous and breathtaking as it is completely terrible. It’s like a birthday cake that tastes like garbage. A 20-room mansion made of sticks. I absolutely adored it, then actively despised it. Then back again. Job done, really. Long may her reign of terror continue.

Vulture has a very comprehensive (and almost complete) take on 32 Wuthering Heights film versions. From the worst one (Wuthering High 2015) to the best one Arashi go Oka 1988) passing through some very obscure and exotic versions. Impressive:

Is there another novel that crosses borders and eras as smoothly as Wuthering Heights does? The recent release of Emerald Fennell’s version of Emily Brontë’s 1847 classic has prompted a new wave of debates over literary fidelity, but the truth is that Wuthering Heights works no matter the context or the culture. It is the ultimate melodrama, and despite its English origins the enthusiasm with which it has been adapted into other nations’ cinemas is proof of the visceral power of its story and themes. When the new film was first announced, I had the idea of trying to track down all its many film and TV versions — loose, faithful, or otherwise. This… turned out to be a bigger project than initially envisioned. The story has been adapted all over the world, sometimes in modern settings, often in its original setting, and occasionally in a different period entirely. (Medieval Japan? 1930s France? I’m still waiting for the sci-fi version.) I did have to limit my search to feature-length films and mini-series, because I’m not sure how I’d even track down (let alone have time to watch) a 48-episode Venezuelan telenovela from 1976 or the various Mexican telenovelas over the years, the first of which aired in 1964. Then there are the adaptations that have been lost to time. A 1920 silent feature film no longer exists. At least two early BBC versions were never preserved. But for now, here are all the film and TV adaptations of Wuthering Heights that I could get my hands on. Ranked.

Screendaily publishes the box office results of UK and Ireland:

Emerald Fennell’s Emily Brontë adaptation Wuthering Heights took flight at the UK-Ireland box office this weekend with a £7.6m start.

The Warner Bros title took an excellent £10,030 location average, even given its 761-site release – the second-widest ever for a non-event release in the territory. (Ben Dalton)

Now, some reviews of Charli XCX's Wuthering Heights: 

In the case of Wuthering Heights, the album sometimes feels as if Charli committed fully to her concept, but didn’t allow herself to branch out even further, reach higher, express – or even abandon – more. It is a symphony, but not quite an opus. Yet as it stands, this might actually be her most successful album: re-imagining herself as bravely as she has many times, but shedding the fur coat. And in that, this is likely a more valid, lasting and, surprisingly, necessary adaptation than Fennell could have managed. Happy, belated, Valentine’s Day! (John Wohlmacher in Beats per Minute)

 But Wuthering Heights (the album, pointedly un-quoted, as if it’s trying to outgrow its source material) refuses total self-seriousness. Instead, it’s a feverishly romantic valentine to the film, corseted in orchestral swells yet still beating with Charli’s signature chrome-plated pop. There are violins, yes—sawing away like they’re auditioning for a BBC period drama—but even at her most windswept, the synths land with a nightclub exactitude similar to 2024’s BRAT. The moors, it turns out, have a subwoofer. (Cam Delisle in ReadRange)

 At some point after Fennell asked Charli to contribute music to Wuthering Heights, Charli raised that request and inquired about making a full-length concept album. From a creator’s standpoint, it’s a brilliant way to follow up Brat. Its ambiguous association with the film invokes inherently lower stakes, but defining it as a “concept album” still grants Charli a considerable amount of creative freedom that a proper soundtrack album might restrict. Most of what we hear in the film Wuthering Heights, for instance, isn’t Charli’s songs but Anthony Willis’ string-laden score. (Abby Jones in Stereogum)

 Wuthering Heights unfolds as a shape-shifting fever dream, reveling in its strange, abrasive textures while never letting go of sharp hooks or plainspoken immediacy. Charli feels far more attuned to the dark, knotted intensity of Brontë’s original vision than its film counterpart; the emotions here aren’t framed with irony or held at arm’s length. They arrive raw and unguarded. The result is a stormy, gothic triumph. (Caroline Kelly in Extra)

The Guardian explores Olivia Chaney's song Dark Eyed Saylor and the movie:

 For years, Chaney’s version of Dark Eyed Sailor only existed in live YouTube clips, but she finally released a recorded version last Friday, produced by Oli Deakin (mastermind of CMAT’s albums If My Wife New I’d Be Dead and Euro-Country). She’d recorded “many” versions of it before – three were even mastered for albums, but “never quite fit”. She finally heard it fit at the Wuthering Heights premiere in Leicester Square on 5 February. 

What was the evening like? “Drinking champagne behind Richard E Grant?” She laughs. “Insane. I gripped my husband’s hand so tight when the song came in – hearing my voice all alone – that it reminded me of giving birth, gripping my doula’s hand so hard I nearly broke her knuckles!” 

The song appears again when Heathcliff returns to Cathy, now rich and grown up, and in the film’s final, longing minutes. It’s always been Chaney’s husband’s favourite recording, she adds. “It’s a song I love very much. It comes back and haunts you.” (Jude Rogers)

And more music inspired by Wuthering Heights. Far Out Magazine rescues a 1983 song bu Stevie Nicks, Wild Heart which was inspired by Wuthering Heights 1939 film.