Wuthering Heights is a maximalist exploration in repressed lust and toxic relationships that is as unsubtle as it is deliberately provocative, for better and worse.

Wuthering Heights is an adaptation in name only. That’s not a compliment.

Now, I’m definitely not saying that changing up the approach towards source material can’t result in a great movie. Just look at what Park Chan-wook did with No Other Choice. I’m also not saying that director and screenwriter Emerald Fennell read the Wikipedia entry for Wuthering Heights rather than Emily Brontë’s groundbreaking Gothic novel and completely skipped over the ‘themes’ section.

What I can definitely say is that Fennell doesn’t care for what the novel stands for on any level, other than Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) being overly repressed star-crossed lovers carrying untold amounts of psychosexual urges.

This is immediately clear during the opening moments where we hear someone gasping for air, almost suggestive of sexual exertion of some kind… only to be revealed that it was actually someone being hanged. The whiplash of this reveal is compounded when the crowd cheers at the hanged person’s death and a montage of suggestive scenes plays out, like a couple making out followed by a close up on a woman’s ample cleavage. Pain and suffering is equal to pleasure in this universe and it is made most clear when the title card comprised of a woman’s braided hair pops up.

Not exactly subtle, but Fennell’s maximalist approach towards, well, everything doesn’t exactly leave room for subtlety. And hey, that opening sequence is a bold promise from her right away: This will be a vibes movie and it is going to be evocative.

Great! So what are you going to do next, Emerald Fennell? As it turns out, very little of any substance.

Plumbing material for thematic depth isn’t exactly Fennell’s strong suit. Her first film, Promising Young Woman, squanders a strong premise centred around a world that normalises and trivalises sexual assault on women by never quite figuring out what she wants to say about the issue other than ‘assault is bad’. Her second film, Saltburn, is a debauched, cartoonish romp filled with provocative imagery that tries to shoehorn in some half-assed commentary about class. With Wuthering Heights, Fennell ditches all pretense about theme and goes straight for all-style, no-brains-required entertainment.

A good chunk of the novel’s central characters (with the exception of Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), Isabella Linton (Alison Oliver), and Nelly Dean (Hong Chau)), most of the events that unfold (especially the novel’s second half), and whatever themes were explored are completely cut from this adaptation. Filling that narrative void is a lethal visual cocktail of sadomasochistic lust, love, and pain that star-crossed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff force-feed each other over the course of 136 minutes. When the camera isn’t focused on Robbie and Elordi gazing longingly at each other, it’s lingering on dripping egg yolks and squishy dough being kneaded roughly. I’m all for longing and lusting in movies, but this all feels empty and un-erotic because I’m being told what I should feel – i.e. turned on – rather than just being locked in.

It’s frustrating as all hell because what begins as a primal childhood meet-cute with quasi-incestuous undertones quickly descends into shallow, tedious carnal imagery. There was a point where I was playing ‘spot the genital part/bodily fluid’ whenever a close-up of some oozing or dripping liquid pops up. Fennell had set up some potentially interesting visual cues and character dynamics, so why not say anything about them beyond ‘heh, sex’?

The pain and suffering Cathy and Heathcliff inflict upon each other is almost as awful as the experience of watching them interact on the big screen. By focusing on vibes and imagery, Fennell has completely neglected to give every major character any semblance of personality, common sense, or even a smidgen of likeability.

Cathy is nothing more than a materialistic spoiled brat; Heathcliff is moody with a BDSM kink; Edgar is frustratingly stupid and oblivious; Isabella is more repressed with psychosexual proclivities than every other character combined while being entertainingly creepy; and Nelly is manipulative and petty. Not exactly a cast of characters whom you can latch onto – unless you have a leather whip or leash in tow.

As attractive as Robbie and Elordi are, their chemistry is colder than the chilly 18th-century England setting. It’s not their fault though as both are fine actors – and Elordi has proven he can play towering Victorian-era figures to a tee – but even they can only do so much when Cathy and Heathcliff are nothing more than conduits of repressed lust on the page.

During a scene where Cathy gets caught masturbating out in the wild by Heathcliff, who grabs her ‘used’ hand, sniffs, and then licks it, the intended foreplay is more baffling than titillating. You’re either going to laugh or cross your legs out of discomfort rather than arousal. Turns out personality kind of matters even when you’re two of the hottest people on this green(ish) earth.

And yet, despite all the inexplicable story decisions, Margot Robbie’s inconsistent accent, the bastardisation of the word ‘adaptation’, and too many close-ups of Jacob Elordi’s tongue flicking around people’s faces, I found myself laughing quite a bit during this movie. I simply cannot find it in any fibre of my being to defend Wuthering Heights, but I can also honestly say that I was never bored. Does it work on any fundamental level of substance? Hell no. Is it a riot? Yes, hell optional.

It’s become increasingly clear that Emerald Fennell’s ‘look at me!!!’ approach to her movies is because she really doesn’t have much to say underneath the tightly-wound bodice of whatever material she’s working with – and that’s assuming there’s enough understanding of said material. But with this version of Wuthering Heights, she has somehow managed to make her subversive, over-the-top version of ‘style over substance’ work, for better and worse. This is undoubtedly going to be one of the dumbest, most unhinged movies of 2026, but she’s pulling it off better than Heathcliff frantically pulling off Cathy’s clothes.