Emily Brontë got it all wrong. A novel intricately tracing the story of two families over several generations, told by multiple narrators, in a complexly interlocking time scheme? Lovers who never consummate their relationship? A hero who is explicitly evil, a nightmare of cruelty and vindictiveness? That will never do. Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn) has fixed all these mistakes.
As in most adaptations of Wuthering Heights, she has omitted the entire story of the second generation in this family saga, including the ruination of Cathy Earnshaw’s brother, Hindley, and the marriages of her daughter, Cathy Linton, first to Linton Heathcliff and then to Hareton Earnshaw. Whereas other adaptations just stop tactfully short of these complications, Fennell has radically altered the story to abolish them.
Cathy here has no brother. It is her father (blustering Martin Clunes) who ruins himself with drink. So that’s one tricky element redacted. Cathy doesn’t have a child with her husband, Edgar Linton; she instead dies of sepsis after a miscarriage. Another poser dodged. And no sex? We are treated to a montage of Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) shagging all over the place, inside and out, on the moors, in her weird pink bedroom, in a fairy-tale carriage. No explanation is given of why Edgar (Shazad Latif), hasn’t noticed. So that’s Emily told. Relying on this film to skip the book will get students in deep trouble.
“I wanted to make something that made me feel like I felt when I first read it [aged 14], which means that it’s an emotional response to something. It’s, like, primal, sexual,” Fennell told the Brontë Women’s Writing Festival last year. She surely has made a film revealing what turned her on as an adolescent – grandeur, gowns, jewels, coiffures, servants, cakes, a touch of S&M – but it is a travesty of the novel. It proceeds, moreover, by a series of would-be viral moments, tableaux and pageants, rather than any genuine narrative propulsion, making it oddly boring for all the spectacle.
We open, for no good reason, with a public hanging (“He’s got a stiffy!”). Then Mr Earnshaw brings home young Heathcliff (Owen Cooper of Adolescence) and tells his daughter, young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington), he’s to be her pet. Wuthering Heights is no remote farmhouse, it turns out, but some kind of vast satanic mill with immense high-ceilinged rooms. None of the settings here make any spatial sense at all – they are conceived solely as backdrops.
The kids play together and pledge themselves (“I’ll never leave you”). Heathcliff is savagely beaten by Mr Earnshaw, leaving impressive welts, after nobly taking the blame for a misdemeanour by Cathy.
On come Robbie, perfect as Barbie but entirely wrong for this part, aged 35 (in the novel Cathy is 15 when she gets engaged, 18 when she dies), and fellow Aussie, Elordi, ditto at 28, a lean surfer dude without a flicker of intelligence in his eyes and an early Beatles accent. Together they spy on a servant, young Joseph (Ewan Mitchell), enjoying some kinky sex (halter, whipping) with his girlfriend but they fail to follow suit. Shortly after, Heathcliff catches Cathy having a furious wank up by the rocks but they still hold back – though Heathcliff does lift her up to his height by her bodice and introduce her to his signature move, finger-sucking.
Reverting to the novel, Heathcliff overhears Cathy saying that marrying him would degrade her. She weds adoring Edgar, even though he’s nouveau riche – the Lintons’ home, Thrushcross Grange, is out-of-this-world palatial, full of footmen, glitter and fancy dishes.
Five years later, Heathcliff is back, rich (never explained), soigné, with a fab greatcoat and a gold tooth. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” the couple gasp, going at it. Then, when he’s finally banned from the house and realises Cathy is pregnant, Heathcliff vengefully seduces Edgar’s ward (not sister) Isabella Linton (Alison Oliver), a naive girl repeatedly made ridiculous by dreadful outfits. Heathcliff taunts her, he’ll never love her. Does she want him to stop? Not likely. Soon they’re married and she’s enjoying being chained up.
After a little light necrophilia, the film ends with a recap, including an excruciating glimpse of how Heathcliff and Cathy might have aged happily together. Charli XCX provides the bangers in this extended music video. It is to be hoped this Wuthering Heights provides insight into primal Fennell alone, and not women more generally. The viewer would be better off imagining what the celibate genius Emily Brontë might have made of it.
“Wuthering Heights” is out now
[Further reading: American hegemony comes for our lunch]
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This article appears in the 11 Feb 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Labour in free fall
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