Emerald Fennell's radical revamp will almost certainly provoke pearl-clutchingThis is a sizzling, amusing and stormy new screen adaptation of Emily Brontë’s gothic romance – with an outrageous, often irresistible sense of fun. (...)Elordi makes a decent fist of Heathcliff’s gruff Yorkshire accent, channelling Lady Chatterley and Sharpe-era Sean Bean, and Robbie brings the sparkling charisma and impeccable judgement she showed in Barbie, giving a fully fleshed, bratty yet tragic turn, amidst the sometimes distractingly fantastical sets. While, as Nelly, Chau is the model of actorly restraint in a simmering performance that sometimes threatens to steal the show.On one hand the cinematic equivalent of ‘go big or go home’, on the other an emotionally impactful adaptation for the ages, Wuthering Heights is wonderfully flamboyant filmmaking, that will almost certainly provoke pearl-clutching amongst the purists. (Emma Simmonds)
Margot Robbie And Jacob Elordi Bring The Heat In Emerald Fennell's Untamed Reinvention Sure To Be Divisive. (...)Elordi and Robbie are breathtakingly gorgeous, exuding sex appeal. It’s perfect for Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, which embraces anachronism in the dynamic visuals and pulsating score, complete with new music by Charli XCX. This isn’t some opulent, refined, handsome period drama. It’s messy and modern and at times quite hilarious. The best example is Alison Oliver as the cartoonishly awkward ward of Cathy’s boring husband. She starts off looking like a cold fish but eventually shifts into the funniest, and most disturbing victim of Heathcliff’s vengeance.I’m still partial to Arnold’s faithful, if undersexed, adaptation, but it’d be a lie to say that Fennell’s Wuthering Heights didn’t leave its mark. Fennell is unafraid to take classic material and reshape it to her own devious whims, and like it or not, there is no compromise here at all. This is Fennell’s movie through and through, every calculated beat of it. One thing you’ll never be able to say is that Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is like any other. It is uniquely hers, and those who are willing to go along for the ride are going to glad that they did. (Travis Hopson)
Designed to titillate with its tongue very much in its flushed cheek, Emerald Fennell’s raunchy take on Charlotte Brontë’s (sic) doomy classic sets its stall out from the opening as a hanged man gets an erection, prompting carnality from the assembled crowd – including a shuddering nun. Death and sex continue to be inextricably linked in this tale of two Victorian pseudo-siblings who run wild on the Yorkshire moors and through each others’ dreams as they grow from children to cruel adults locked in a toxic romance. Jettisoning the novel’s bookended story of the fate of the family home, Wuthering Heights, and the generational trauma of the Earnshaws, screenwriter and director, Fennell concentrates on the lethal enmeshment of Cathy (Margot Robbie) and her adopted brother, Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) which sees them devouring each other in the rain, masturbating on rocky outcrops and smearing fingers through any wet thing they can find (snail trail, damp dough, a gelatined fish mouth, blood). (...)Flashy, brash, bombastic, hot and heavy – this Wuthering Heights is like no other, fully committing to its horny-teen concept with all the headlong passion of a ‘handsome brute’ falling for the wrong girl. On that level alone it’s worth seeing and debating. And as they say in Yorkshire: where there’s muck, there’s brass… (Jane Crowther)
Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights (2026) is lush, erotic, and exhausting, an intoxicating but overlong take on obsession and class. (...)Its atmosphere is thick with longing and despair, and its commitment to emotional extremity is almost admirable. Fennell doesn’t soften the story or search for redemption where none exists. Cathy and Heathcliff are portrayed as toxic, destructive people who devastate themselves and everyone around them and yet, in this vision, they remain cosmically bound. Not meant to be together in any healthy sense, but unable to exist apart.That contradiction is where the film is most compelling. Wuthering Heights isn’t a love story so much as a portrait of desire turned poisonous, of trauma mistaken for destiny. It’s messy, excessive, often frustrating, and frequently beautiful. Audiences will likely either embrace its maximalism or recoil from it entirely. I found myself caught in between admiring the ambition, exhilarated by individual moments, but worn down by the relentlessness of it all.Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights may not be subtle, faithful, or restrained, but it is unmistakably hers. For better and worse, it’s a film that refuses moderation, daring the audience to either surrender to its intensity or reject it outright.
Wuthering Heights Mostly Trades in Substance for Period Drama Style.What the movie loses in context and commentary, it succeeds in its visually striking take on a romantic drama. (...)Ultimately, as a movie on its own, Emerald Fennell’s erotic reinvention of the novel may not reach the heights of its lofty ambitions, but there are some joys to be found here. The movie feels like it was made for today’s audience, one in which pop culture staples like A24 films, fan edits, and Bridgerton have helped shape audiences’ tastes. Whether you see that as good or bad is up to you, but in this case, Wuthering Heights gets a half-hearted pass. If you’re coming into this as a fan of the book, this adaptation might not be it. But if you’re just looking for love on the big screen, it’s an ok watch. (Rafael Bautista)
Masturbation on the Moors: Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ Is a Bodice-Ripper for the Internet Age. (...)Ultimately, I’m not convinced a film so eager to amuse modern bouches can possibly eviscerate us in the same way as the novel that birthed it. Where Fennell’s other films mined orifices and our capacity for bewildered disbelief—cavorting naked through manor houses, slurping adolescent bathwater—to achieve their maximalist sensibility, with Wuthering Heights, the director settles for scandal-lite in a heritage font. Having exhumed Brontë’s version, Fennell’s take seems to be what if all this repression were extremely cinematic? and embracing style above all else. Enthusiasts of the novel’s emotional disemboweling may not appreciate Fennell’s fantastically fun take on their somber, sacred text, but that doesn’t change the fact that sales of Brontë’s original spiked by 132 percent after the film’s first trailer was released last September, or that Fennell has nevertheless produced a slick, imminently watchable and highly entertaining rollick—even if it trips over itself now and then as it tries to make sure it’s being fun enough. (Raven Smith)
Wuthering Heights Is A Hot, Horny Riot Made For Women – Of Course Critics Hate It. (...)This is not a movie made for critics, nor film festival accolades, it’s not a film for everyone – it’s a film for anyone who’s been a lusty teenager, anyone who loves a bit of old-fashion yearning, anyone who’s had a forbidden crush, anyone who fancies Jacob or Margot (whose chemistry is turned up to the MAX), anyone who enjoys heaving bosoms and simmering sexual tension, anyone who wants to enjoy 2hrs17 minutes of OTT escapism and fantasy, something beautiful and rich to look at. (Hanna Woodside)
Emerald Fennell’s Film Will Be Divisive But You Can’t Fault the Craft.Now, while my own feelings on Wuthering Heights were mixed, there is something that needs to be acknowledged. The film had an undeniable effect on the audience I saw it with, with the mostly female crowd openly weeping when it was over and vocally having a blast from start to finish. It will likely resonate strongly for some people and will deservedly make a boatload of money. While I didn’t invest in the characters in quite the way I’d hoped, I also felt like I was in the hands of a director who was making exactly the movie she wanted to make—and no one can say her vision isn’t singular in that respect. Wuthering Heights is a big swing, and even if it didn’t entirely work for me, I still had a great time watching it. (Chris Brumbay)
Emerald Fennell's Deviant Adaptation Will Leave You Lusting for More. (...)imilarly, for all Fennell’s aesthetic flash — often derided as Instagram-y — her grasp of cinematic language is nowhere near the level of mastery found in something like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, which nearly 30 years later still feels exciting and bold. Like Romeo + Juliet, this is an adaptation whose surface style becomes its vehicle for depth. Unlike that classic, though, “Wuthering Heights” is decidedly less experimental in its technique, and that’s too bad. The film pushes the farthest in its musical texture, with a wonderfully lush, electronically-infused score by Anthony Willis, and songs from Charli XCX that imbue the movie with a modern sound to match its modern concerns.Still, when it counts, Fennell’s sense of simple provocation does great heavy lifting. “Wuthering Heights” is hardly the most scandalous or smutty film out there — though it’s unusually salacious for a major, big-budget Hollywood release in 2026 — but Fennell taps into a lust that’s more primal, befitting the source material. A scene in which Heathcliff places his hands over Cathy’s eyes and mouth might be the hottest sex scene in a major blockbuster in many years, and that’s despite them not even having sex in the scene. That’s the energy Fennell is after. The 14-year-old fantasy. The perverse “I could fix him... and he could fix me” spirit that exists among the dense, ambiguous novel’s many qualities, and has so fixed itself in the cultural firmament. (Corey Atad)
A (Very) Bad Romance Makes For A (Very) Good MovieMargot Robbie and Jacob Elordi don't wanna be friends in Emerald Fennell's cinematically opulent, subtext-made-text adaptation of Emily Brontë's classic novel. (...)Writer/director Fennell’s latest offering focuses on the core “Catherine and Heathcliff” relationship, which is little different from, frankly, most filmed adaptations going back to William Wyler’s 1939 adaptation. Shel has crafted a (my words, not hers) spiritually faithful variation on how the book resonated with her when she first read it. That said, it is no less accurate to the respective text than Guillermo del Toro’s acclaimed and Oscar-nominated Frankenstein. (Scott Mendelson)
This “Wuthering Heights” is aimed at those with little patience for period romances. Comic relief abounds, and over-the-top touches keep modern audiences engaged.The two-plus-hour running time is a mistake, but there isn’t a sequence that isn’t lovely to behold.Fennell shrewdly sketches the class divide impeding this pulpy romance, but its woven expertly into the narrative. Other flourishes are more curious, once again keeping us off balance while the source material peeks out from the surface.Your mileage may vary, but those willing to accept a story that’s merely influenced by a literary classic will come away entertained. (Christian Toto)
Fennell’s visually striking, psychologically intense adaptation of the novel has a bold, modern sensibility. (John Lui)
Lukewarm
Garish and silly ‘Wuthering Heights’ strands Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi on the moors forevermore. (...)Late last week, representatives for Warner Bros. sent out a curious directive to film critics set to review Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Namely, that we don’t refer to the film as Wuthering Heights but rather “Wuthering Heights” – in quotation marks. (...)Then there is Fennell’s decision to cast Elordi at all, given that Heathcliff was described by Brontë as a “dark-skinned gypsy” and long viewed as ethnically vague, the “other” who so entrances the white, once-blue-blooded Catherine. Fennell’s decision to cast the unambiguously white Elordi might not be so objectionable – again, every new interpreter of a story should be given the grace to reimagine and recontextualize the boundaries of a world previously conceived – were it not for just how the director chooses to cast the rest of her film. If we can ask why this version of Heathcliff is embodied in a certain way (white and untouchably virile) then we can also ask Fennell to explain her decision to hire an actor of colour to play the weak-willed and metaphorically impotent Edgar, who was very much white in Brontë’s story.All of this, though, would require audiences to seriously consider the undertaking that is “Wuthering Heights,” which repeatedly proves to have been constructed absent any sense of seriousness. I suppose it is all up there in the film’s opening scene, set at a public execution, in which Fennell constructs a gallows-humour gag whose mileage depends on your appreciation for the appropriate usage of the words “hang” and “hung.” But that joke, like the rest of this adaptation, is ultimately on the audience. Or, rather, “the audience.” (Barry Hertz)
Style devours substance in a seductive but uneven adaptation. (...)Despite its flaws, “Wuthering Heights” remains a sweeping gothic romance drenched in erotic tension and visual grandeur. Fennell pulls the subtext out of the shadows and forces it into the spotlight, transforming a classic tale of doomed love into something feral, provocative, and often thrilling. The film will undoubtedly divide audiences. Some will be enthralled by its audacity and sensual energy, while others may recoil from its messy characterization and narrative shortcuts. Still, there is something undeniably bold about a filmmaker willing to reinterpret a literary staple with this much heat and personality. Even when it stumbles, “Wuthering Heights” refuses to be boring, and that alone makes it worth experiencing on the biggest screen possible. (Nate Adams)
In fact, "Wuthering Heights" is more than the romance and revenge tale that Fennell chose to focus on, so much that the final output feels lacking in that regard. (...)Faithful readers of the original story will no doubt point out all the faults in this new adaptation, from the lack of class and race discussions, to the erasure of next generation characters, Cathy Linton, Hareton Earnshaw, and Linton Heathcliff.But one cannot fault Fennell for attempting to give her own take on the beloved story, albeit faltering in some areas but winning in others. (Kristofer Purnell)
Fennell's messy 'Wuthering Heights' a playful, unsatisfying adaptation. (...)In this playfully anachronistic version, Fennell puts forth some intriguing ideas and intoxicating cinematic images, but never manages to achieve a firm grasp on the tone of her “Wuthering Heights,” which whips like a loose skirt in the breeze, see-sawing between earnestness and arch, over-stylized melodrama. After two hours of oddly funny skulduggery and muddy rutting, she asks the audience to turn on the waterworks with a big, bloody show and a soapy montage. Alas, we’re all bone-dry, because none of the emotional components meaningfully cohere. The surface pleasures of Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” may be plenty, but the story itself, well, it never achieves climax. (Katie Walsh)
Always gorgeous to watch, this film is a visual spectacle and makes us think of an epic movie. But I do have to admit that, unlike the Cassie of Promising Young Female, where we sympathized with her crazed revenge fantasy, there isn’t all that much to like with this Cathy and Heathcliff. Sure, they smoulder and are physically attractive, but this Cathy is also vain, calculating, and petulant, and this Heathcliff is proud and ready to demean others in the name of his petty revenge, and wants to hurt Cathy. So how are we genuinely going to like these two?When the tragedy strikes and the film comes to a close, we’re supposed to be moved and feel the emotional weight of our two protagonists, but I watched impassively, and I knew then that something had misfire. (Philip Cu Unjieng)
We received a note from the studio insisting that the official title of writer-director Emerald Fennell’s new Emily Brontë adaptation is to be printed as “Wuthering Heights” in quotation marks. Since we already print all of our movie titles in quotation marks, I think we’re covered here, and I’m not going to make you look at “‘Wuthering Heights’” for an entire review. This is part of a recent trend of annoying title stylizations that drive copy editors crazy and leave readers scratching their heads at unsightly style guide anomalies like “TÁR” and the weird Gen Z aversion to capital letters. But having seen the movie, I can also understand why they’d want to make a distinction. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is not your high school English teacher’s “Wuthering Heights,” and it’s certainly nothing like William Wyler’s 1939 adaptation that starred Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. (...)They’re excessively hyperbolic and can be a little embarrassing. Just like young people in love. (Sean Burns)
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi fail to generate much onscreen heat as Cathy and Heathcliff in this faux-outrageous take on Wuthering Heights. (...)And yet, as the film moves into its tragic second half, something weird happens: it doesn’t exactly get good, but it does get stranger and more interesting. The deranged dollhouse design of the Linton’s Thrushcross Grange manor — with its blood-red acrylic floors, skin-coloured wallpaper, fireplaces made of hand sculptures and rooms filled with ostentatious ball gowns — gives the film some crazy horror movie energy just as Cathy starts mentally and physically deteriorating.Fennell, too, goes for baroque in her Brian De Palma-esque shots of blood spreading across bedsheets; and Elordi suddenly comes into his own as the more refined-on-the-surface Heathcliff starts channelling his brutishness and cruelty into targets beyond just Cathy. In short, the film’s style-over-substance emptiness starts working in its favour. It’s a gaudy and confused love story for gaudy and confused times. (Alistair Harkness)
Bad ones
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have lashings of kinky sex but it's less Wuthering Heights more Fifty Shades of Grimm. (...)Fennell sexes up her film in other ways too, with deliberately anachronistic music by the hip singer-songwriter Charli XCX, as well as costume and design flourishes that appear to be inspired, if not directly pinched, from Yorgos Lanthimos's deliciously nutty period drama The Favourite (2018).Which is all well and good, but it's to service a love story between two people that I simply didn't care about, and I doubt I'll be alone.'I think you like to see me cry,' Cathy accuses her lifelong companion Nelly Dean (Hong Chau). 'Not half as much as you like crying,' Nelly replies, and she has a point. Added to the relentless rain, Cathy's incontinent blubbing makes this a very watery film indeed. Except where it really counts, in the audience.As the final credits rolled, so far as I could tell, there wasn't a damp eye in the house. (Brian Viner)
Wuthering Heights Dips a Toe in Obsession, Refuses the Plunge. (...)Visually, through its costumes and set pieces, the film captures the gothic romance feel the book is known for. Some moments felt gritty and dirty, while others were bright, pristine, and sterile, creating a stark contrast in storytelling that kept your interest mildly focused on the lead’s story.In the end, you get about halfway through the film and think it’s very slow and mechanical, and then the last hour turns into a disjointed fetish fest of obsession that is melodramatic and boring. If you have read the books, this adaptation may be exactly what you expected from the movie; for a non-book reader, it is forgettable and doesn’t stand out in the genre. (Robert Prentice)
That is why I find myself conflicted about not loving Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”. Not because it is authorial, which is always welcome, but because it displaces the nerve center of the work. By transforming a complex mechanism into a straight line, the film loses what allows the novel to endure over time. In the name of identification, sensuality, and immediate intensity, it abandons the refusal of comfort that defines Emily Brontë.To be conservative in this debate today is an act of critical resistance. Not against new readings, but against the idea that every classic must be corrected to function in the present. Some books endure precisely because they do not adapt. Because they remain abrasive. Because they demand more from the reader and, consequently, from the cinema that seeks to translate them.And when that does not happen, truth be told, quotation marks are not enough. Perhaps it would have been more honest to choose another name. (Ana Claudia Paixão)
Emerald Fennell’s sexed-up ‘Wuthering Heights’ just hangs limp.Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi do their best, but they can’t compete with the filmmaker’s misplaced, unintentionally funny rendering of the classic novel. (...)Fennell takes enormous liberties with Brontë’s novel, eliminating and changing characters and altering the story to her purposes. This is all fine, in the sense that movies and novels are different art forms, and Fennell is free to pursue her own vision. But Fennell changes so much that it makes one wonder why she bothered to make “Wuthering Heights” at all. She could have made the same movie by adapting some random romance novel with a drawing of Fabio on the cover. (...)Both actors have to compete with Anthony Willis’s overwrought soundtrack, which keeps insisting we’re feeling emotions that we aren’t. Even worse are the lyrical snatches from generic songs, which Willis inserts within the scenes and sometimes intersperses between lines of dialogue. (Mick LaSalle)
Emerald Fennell Turns a Classic Tale Into a Mindlessly Horny Monster.Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star in this absurdly sensual, annoyingly reductive adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel. (...)Emerald Fennell opens “Wuthering Heights” with a large audience visibly aroused by their own bloodlust. The impetus for their horny ghoulishness is a hanging, which leaves the corpse visibly and publicly erect, which several young people giggle about. We are to believe, perhaps, that Fennell is making a point that audiences crave sex, violence and emotional trauma for the sake of our own immature personal amusement, and again, she’s probably right. But then “Wuthering Heights” does that exact thing, unironically, in slow-motion, so it’s not so much making a point as it is calling its shots.“Wuthering Heights” isn’t so much an adaptation as it is a book report that would lead to a very uncomfortable parent-teacher conference. It exaggerates all the horny, moist intercourse and soap operatic betrayals, downplays all the substance, and makes room for problematic interpretations for reasons that baffle the mind. Damn it, this movie looks good, but damn it, this movie ain’t good. (William Bibbiani)
A Highly Sexualized But Oddly Square Adaptation. (...)Once Heathcliff re-enters the picture years later, now a lord to rival Edgar, Wuthering Heights‘ two strands––kinkiness and tragedy––become apparent. Fennell’s big change to the text seems her desire to make Cathy a new icon of “female gooning.” The film’s focus on skin, fluids, goo, and fingers in orifices signals her highly sexualized take. Yet it never quite erupts or––to evoke its own imagery––gushes. If anything, it feels tame. Fennell has said her intention was to create a new Titanic (a romantic classic that younger girls would see over and over) but the film feels stuck in that adolescent space while simultaneously trying to be “shocking.” Will anyone over 13 years old actually be rattled by any of this?It doesn’t help that Wuthering Heights struggles significantly in its third act, giving an impression of too much footage left on the cutting-room floor. Between odd tonal swerves and the rushed conclusion to a character’s tragic arc, Fennell’s ending lands with a total thud. The film ultimately, oddly feels as square as William Wyler’s 1939 iteration, no matter how many allusions to masturbation. (Ethan Vestby)
'Wuthering Heights' Is Unmoored from Literature. (....)Wuthering Heights insists upon paying homage to classic Hollywood romances like Gone with the Wind while also offering a highly sexualized take on Catherine and Heathcliff's storied romance, ultimately using sex, violence and emotional manipulation in the name of passion. This isn't to say transgressive romances don't work — Heated Rivalry has recently proven adaptations of erotic fiction can be done well — but Wuthering Heights pays outright disrespect to its original author and her work. It arguably goes so far to say that Brontë's book doesn't actually matter here.In a different world — perhaps one where a global literacy crisis isn't a reality, or one where style doesn't routinely eclipse substance — that might be forgivable, and this adaptation might even be lauded as daring. But since Fennell obviously has the skills, resources and desire to tell a tawdry, empty-headed romance, she should have just written her own. (Jericho Tadeo)
Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights adaptation struggles to capture the novel's emotional depth. The film's central romance fails to ignite, leaving audiences detached and unengaged. (...)Technically, the film oscillates between intention and indecision. Robbie’s period costumes, in particular, seem torn between era authenticity and visual spectacle, a fitting metaphor for the film’s larger identity crisis.Ultimately, no amount of aesthetic polish can salvage a romance if its central relationship fails to stir you. Wuthering Heights should make you ache, recoil, and yearn, not sit in detached admiration, waiting for feeling to arrive.“Drive me mad,” Heathcliff asks. This Wuthering Heights never dares to. (Shweta Keshri)
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