Underneath its elaborate art direction and sets is a bratty and cynical gothic romance.
In any “Wuthering Heights” film adaptation, we’ve had many stars talking on Emily Bronte’s characters: Catherine “Cathy” Earnshaw and Heathcliff. We’ve had Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall, Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, and Kaya Scodelario and James Howson. And now in 2026, we have Margot Robbie and the towering Jacob Elordi playing the leads.
The movie opens with a hanging, people celebrating and sinning, and the title “Wuthering Heights” in the form of stop motion hair. So, we might be seeing something gorgeous. And while Robbie and Elordi are the new leads, Charli XCX provides the film’s soundtrack, so, I guess these celebrities are sure to help bring young women into the theater. Especially since it’s being released just in time for Valentine’s Day.
You know the story, as Cathy’s father takes in a poor boy named Heathcliff, who works as a stable boy in their Wuthering Heights home, and these two have a toxic romance. The kind in which he would take a beating for her and she would betray her heart. And the kind when she marries the rich Edgar Linton and reunites with Heathcliff through an affair. That’s how you know it’s an R-rated gothic romance, especially when the main heroine masturbates outside on windy moors, and when kids are commenting on how the hanged man dies with an erection.
This version is also the latest entry from Emerald Fennel, who also gave us the brilliant “Promising Young Woman” and the charming “Saltburn.” I wanted to like this new adaptation because of how the filmmaker has been pushing herself to new limits, and she makes it look and feel attractive. But it all feels indulging and at times bratty. The kind when the main heroine has to cry and be told to stop, and the kind when the men are abusive to women. Even in the mid 1840s, I was wondering why Carey Mulligan’s Cassandra wasn’t born yet.
In this movie, Cathy (there’s that Robbie) names Heathcliff (and here’s Elordi) after her dead brother, her drunken father (Martin Clunes) squanders their family fortune, and she eventually marries Mr. Linton (Shazad Latif). They both live with her servant Nelly Dean (Hong Chau) and his younger, dorky, and childish sister Isabella (Alison Oliver) in a lavish mansion. The kind where a fireplace is decorated with many hands, a bedroom is painted the color of Cathy’s face (even dots for her freckles are added), and a dollhouse that’s a replica of the place. It’s a rich house of color palettes worthy of appearing in a Wes Anderson or Edgar Wright movie, and there are a few quick snowy shots that look gorgeous.
Many years later, Heathcliff comes face into Cathy’s life as a rich man who buys Wuthering Heights, and scolds her for her choices (“I have not broken your heart, you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine,” he says). And yet, they still have their passionate affairs. But either way, at her old and new home, Cathy is a selfish and manipulative woman who seems to never be satisfied. And either way, in his wealth and poverty, Heathcliffe is a sadistic and misanthropic man. I guess these two are a match.
I was dazzled at the look of this “Wuthering Heights,” but I was exhausted by the cynical screenplay and how the appearance seems to upstage the characters. Robbie and Elordi are convincing in their roles and they’re supposed to resonate with the literature characters and their unlikable personalities. But this movie seems to indulge in their behaviors by glamorizing them, as if the film was supposed to be attracted to the lust and unfaithfulness. I guess everything is supposed to look great.
“Wuthering Heights” transitions from the book to various adaptations and deals with class differences and toxic love. But one is a weak effort from the usually effective Fennell. And I think you’re better off seeing “Pillion,” which may be a gay love story, but is kind of in the same genre.
