Bold & Brilliant Reimagining of Classic Filmmaking (...)
Fennell proves a worthy addition to the growing roster of filmmakers who’ve refused to make a faithful adaptation of Brontë’s novel, thus screwing over schoolkids everywhere who are looking for a CliffsNotes-esque shortcut for their pending book reports. That some corners of social media have been quick to dismissively and derogatorily label this “fan fiction” as if Peter Jackson’s padded, terrible Hobbit films weren’t exactly that (or at least called out as vociferously at the time of their release) says a lot about our current culture’s misogynist leanings and Fennell being an unwitting lightning rod for it. Nevertheless, she’s crafted her best film to date – one that feels like a decadent homage to the sweeping melodrama of golden era Hollywood. (Courtney Howard)
Emerald Fennell's liberal adaptation of the classic novel – starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi – is one of the best movies of the year so far.
Fennell’s movie may not be a faithful-to-the-letter adaptation, but it’s good enough that it doesn’t matter. Elordi and Robbie are great together. The dialled-all-the-way-up sexual tension is crazy (probably helps that they’re two of the hottest people alive), especially in the first half of the movie, when they nearly yearn themselves into an embolism. But they play the romance even better; it’s impossible not to be affected by the purity of Cathy and Heathcliff’s devotion to each other, even in the face of what they perceive to be their own damnation. Fennell’s tactile filmmaking – regularly focusing in on their fingers interlocking, grazing each other’s palms, or penetrating each other’s mouths – makes you feel like you’re observing intimate moments you shouldn’t be privy to. Charli XCX’s jittery electronic score also helps amp up the romantic tension, and the needle drop of her new song “Chains of Love” hits hard (Fennell's critics like to say she's a music video director at heart, and there's certainly a great one for this song buried in the middle of the film).
This may well be Elordi’s best performance yet. Heathcliff is at times corrosive and appears capable of awful violence, but he’s also got real vulnerability to him. And yet, the real MVP of the movie, for my money, is Alison Oliver (who previously starred alongside Elordi in Saltburn). She plays Linton’s sister – a rich young woman with a dollhouse obsession who appears to have been driven half mad through social isolation – with a perfect Made In Chelsea–esque lilt.
At two hours and 14 minutes, it does stray into overlong territory – I probably could have done with maybe 20 minutes less yearning in the middle somewhere. But for the most part, the pearl-clutchers are wrong – Fennell has used her powers for good here. And whether they like it or not, “Wuthering Heights” is likely to be the defining movie of the first half of 2026. (Ben Allen)
Even so, “Wuthering Heights” remains an elegant, brutal, lustful gothic romance that refuses tasteful distance. It’s maximal and deliberately anachronistic, a big-screen fever dream of ache and viciousness that treats desire like an injury you keep reopening with your own hands. Fennell leans into excess not as provocation, but as emotional truth, letting obsession swell until it becomes the only language the film speaks. The feeling cuts here not as poetry, but as pressure—barbed wire wrapped tight around a heartbeat. In all its wildness, Fennell seals the film with an embrace and a bruise, then lands the kiss like a sudden dagger to the ribs. (Rodrigo Perez)
This is an extremely horny film. Spit and mucus and fluid seep from every frame. We see fingers slick with egg yolk and close-ups of snails weaving sticky trails. Everybody is constantly sopping wet and it’s only partly because of the weather. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi – both magnetic, the camera drinking in their every pore – spend half the movie with their fingers in each other’s mouths. If your goal is to watch beautiful people shagging, “Wuthering Heights” will fill your bingo card many times over.
Wuthering Heights book cover featuring moody Yorkshire moors and gothic elements, highlighting classic literature theme
But it’s also a film of unusual beauty, every shot designed for maximum impact. Whether it’s Cathy walking across the moors, filmed from above with her wedding train billowing absurdly behind her, or Mr Earnshaw lying dead beside a mountain of empty bottles that reaches to the ceiling, it’s brilliantly, meticulously put together.
The backlash against this adaptation started before shooting even began – how dare someone treat Emily this way! – and I can’t help but wonder if Fennell doubled down on her vision, tearing up what remained of the novel in favour of this surreal, impressionistic, singular film. (...) To hell with the doubters: “Wuthering Heights” is a sublime carnival of excess, a bodice-ripper for the OnlyFans generation that stuffs you fit to burst but somehow leaves you wanting more. (Steve Dinneen)
Stylist:
Fennell is never subtle in her symbolism – just watch the opening sequence that conflates an orgasm and a hanging – but the drama only adds to the striking appeal of this adaptation. From the literal black-and-white house Cathy was raised in to the world of colours she’s exposed to at Thrushcross Grange, it’s almost a cautionary tale that the shiny, material temptations of love can only leave you hollow.
The haters will continue to hate on this for not being the Wuthering Heights they know, and that is true, but the essence of the novel, the yearning, the hollow superficiality of love and toxic game-playing in love across the class divide, is heightened to such an excruciating degree. (...)
It will frustrate people for everything it’s not and everything it doesn’t claim to be, but if you can indulge in this film as Fennell’s erotically charged reimagining of Cathy and Heathcliff’s love, then you’re in for a delicious, disturbing and devastating watch. (Jeff Bacon)
A glorious big screen epic that offers much to love on so many levels. (...)
It’s pretty amazing to. me that it’s taken so long for someone to convince a studio to finance such a sweeping epic with such a unique spin on Brontë that can connect even with those who normally wouldn’t find this movie to be their thing. (Edward Douglas)
The latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights may not pass muster for high school English classes looking for help with their homework. However, as a riff on the story's themes, it presents a sexy cast having a ball with all the manipulation. (Fred Topel)
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have bags of chemistry in this unashamedly high-camp adaptation of Emily Brontë’s book. (...)
It’s all wildly fun, a fever dream come to life, though it’s not without its flaws. As the film lurches towards its ending, the edges do start to fray. Several plot threads are left hanging; the dramatic finale feels unresolved, and Heathcliff’s fate is left up to our imaginations. After weeping copiously at the ending, I left dissatisfied. When the sexy sugar rush passes, what’s left? (Vicky Jessop)
Lukewarm
Like a particularly impressive aspic, the film is tantalizing to behold but not so easy to swallow. (...)
Fennell stops short of offering a truly penetrating message, turning Cathy’s desire for Linton into a clear-cut decision between love and vanity. Ultimately, Cathy rejects Heathcliff because she’s selfish and materialistic, not because she’s a 19th-century woman with limited prospects.
The way Fennell seemingly sees it, patriarchy is an annoyance, racial difference as a distraction, and love is simply a matter of choice. As for wealth, it’s the most suffocating of prisons. That’s a message that’s hard to take seriously in our current socio-historical moment, and doubly so given how Fennell is enamored with that particular cage and how it sparkles. (Rocco T. Thompson)
Although the film retains the novel’s Victorian English setting and style, “Wuthering Heights” possesses a thoroughly modern tone, steeped in wink-wink-nudge-nudge irony. Fennell seems to think that modern, Gen Z-driven audiences might receive the sweeping epic romance genre with skepticism, so she beats them to the punch with scenes that have an absurdist rhythm. (...)
So yes, Emerald Fennell knows exactly what she’s doing with her interpretation of “Wuthering Heights.” She wants to provoke discourse, regardless of fidelity to the source material, respect for the time period, and ostensible good taste. She ultimately achieves her aim. The most fruitful discourse comes from her sly send-up of epic romance, which evokes genuine passion and celebrates the genre. Sadly, the conversation falls apart as Fennell loses her grip on the material and slips into primary-color melodrama that teeters between vulgarity and tedium. For some, “Wuthering Heights” will be weapons-grade rage bait. As fair as that feels for our current cultural moment, it could’ve been so much more. (Brandon Lewis)
The budget on-screen is what breathes life into “Wuthering Heights”, which whithers away until perking up with a gonzo, kinky, psychologically warped finale, even if it is one that softens the characters and doesn’t have the boldness to go anywhere near how nasty these characters become in the book. By the end, those quotations come to reflect indecision about what Emerald Fennell wanted to do with her adaptation. (Robert Kojder)
Fennell acknowledges the fact that hers is a freewheeling adaptation of Emily Brontë’s doomed but deathless love affair between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw by putting its title in quotation marks. The film was shot in Yorkshire but its design owes its idiosyncratic style to the current taste for “romantasy”.
Wuthering Heights, the Earnshaws’ gloomily decaying estate, looks as if it’s sitting between a northern variation on Stonehenge and an abandoned salt mine. Oversize spears of slate have popped up in inconvenient places and what remains of the house seems to be gradually sinking into the earth. In extravagant contrast, Thrushcross Grange, where Catherine goes to live after her marriage to Edgar Linton, is like a fusion of Fairyland and a five-star hotel in Dubai. (...)
Brontë laid all this out without editorialising and Fennell follows her example – but the gaudiness of the window dressing keeps getting in the way. (Sandra Hall)
“Wuthering Heights” is not without its virtues, and its technical craftsmanship is itself worthy of being witnessed on the big screen. The costumes aren’t only beautiful, but help to convey things about the characters that are more powerful than dialogue. The score by Anthony Willis is overbearing, but successful in their sweeping epicness, and the original songs by Charli xcx are mostly terrific (“Chains of Love” could very well be an Oscar contender for Best Original Song next year). “Wuthering Heights” is too abrasive to be emotionally involved, yet not brave enough to be completely transgressive. Fennell is entitled to make something anew with “Wuthering Heights,” but what she’s come up with is only grasping at meaning. (Liam Gaughan)
"Wuthering Heights” dropping on Galentine’s Day couldn’t be more appropriate. It’s a raunchy and rotten love story made to be enjoyed with friends. If you love the book, perhaps skip it, but if you’re looking for two hours of visually enjoyable cinema followed by a few ‘can you believe they did that/omg I couldn’t tear my eyes away’ chats over wine with your girls, get those cinema tickets booked. (Bryony Jewell)
Fans of Emily Brontë’s beloved novel would be wise to leave their expectations at the door – this wild take on the classic is, to put it generously, a very loose adaptation of its source material. Its structure is altered, key characters are significantly changed or missing entirely, and countless liberties are taken with the central relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. (Fennell has been open about such changes, describing the film as being based on her memories of reading the book as a teen, rather than strictly faithful.) But, if you can look past that, it’s quite the ride. (...)
This Wuthering Heights, in its entirety, is a mixed bag which will provoke a barrage of Op-Eds, and as much outrage as adulation. But it’s also a film which feels seared into my brain – the eye-popping excess, the unbridled, tongue-in-cheek nastiness, the sheer scale and imagination of it all. See it on the biggest screen possible with as many friends as possible, and get ready to argue for hours afterwards. (Radhika Seth)
Bad ones
The truth is that Fennell is a gifted director and a less accomplished screenwriter. She clearly enjoys recreating maximalist, eclectic settings, dressing her actress in beautiful but historically nonsensical costumes, and she has a sharp, effective eye for image, color, and composition. But she has also decided - one might say quite consciously - to remove anything that stood between her and her vision: precise but not faithful, striking like a two-and-a-half-hour music video, kitsch and excessive, an acrobatic game of desire and sexual repression. One thing, however, must be said: she hasn’t added anything. She has simply (and that is precisely the limitation) carefully selected the parts that interested her and discarded the rest. She discarded the concentric narrative structure, and she discarded much of the context. And if some scenes feel cringe, it may be because they’ve been lifted out of that context, not because certain lines sound exaggerated or archaic, or because the protagonists are tormented to the point of pantomime. Those elements, almost word for word, were already in the novel. The back-and-forth taken one step too far, the exaggerated, gothic declarations of otherworldly love. That’s all Emily Brontë, baby. (Priscilla Lucifora)
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