A Watered-Down Smutfest That Has No Substance, how "Wuthering Heights" (2026) Falls Short in Almost Every Single Way

Disclaimer: I was invited to attend the press screening of this film

Rating: 1/5

A quick disclaimer from me before we get into this review. Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite pieces of literature, it is my favourite classic of all time, so I knew going into this film there would be some bias going up against it, but I was willing to go in with an open mind. After all everyone interprets pieces of art differently. But there reaches a point where you’ve diverted from the source material so drastically that it is inadequate to say it is simply a ‘reimagining.’

This review contains spoilers to “Wuthering Heights”

“Wuthering Heights” has achieved the ever-coveted goal of infuriating me so much that I wished I had walked out of the screening (Image Credit: TV Insider).

When it was announced that Emerald Fennell would be releasing an adaptation (or in her words an interpretation) of Wuthering Heights I remember reading a lot of discourse online about whether she would be able to execute a story as complex and nuanced as Wuthering Heights in a two hour film - many have tried and failed in the past. Personally I have never seen any of Fennell’s directorial or showrunning work, Saltburn never interested me and I never got around to watching Promising Young Woman, so I was going into this film completely blind, but I had heard promising things about her directorial style, although I did have questions as to whether that style would gel with the gothic melancholy landscape found in Wuthering Heights. After all the trailers made it seem like this was a glitzy, glamorous romance story, which is the total opposite of what Wuthering Heights should be, a story which explores the themes of abuse and generational trauma. However, I thought that maybe it was a tactic to lure people in but then tell a compelling story full of nuance and many shades of grey. Unfortunately I have to report that this film is not only shallow, but it hardly delves into any of the themes Brontë explores in her book, leaving the audience feeling unsatisfied and even, in some cases, confused.

“The warning signs were apparent when the first trailer came out calling Wuthering Heights the ‘greatest love story of all time’.”

Lets start with the blatant issues first, the casting. Everyone in this film feels out of place and even miscast in places. And while there are issues with casting a racially ambigious character with a white man (the main male ‘protaganist’ no less) there are bound to be complaints, and rightfully so. However, I will go on the record and say that I am an Elordi defender and I genuinely think he is the strongest out of all of the cast.

My biggest gripe with this film is Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Catherine Earnshaw. Now I adore Margot Robbie as an actress, I think she is a generational talent, so it is genuinely painful to see this portrayal fall so short of the calibre we have gotten used to from her work. First off, and this is a small gripe, why are we not dying her hair brown or at least investing in a brown wig. I know it’s a small ask, but it was so jarring seeing a person that they were calling Cathy throughout the whole runtime but simply just seeing Margot in different costumes. At least with Elordi he could mould himself into a version of Heathcliffe, whereas Margot genuinely looked out of place, part of which I think was due to her age.

In the book Cathy dies when she is 20, and I know my biggest complaint when this adaptation was announced was ‘but wait Margot is too old for this role’ and I’m not saying we haven’t had editions or interpretations of classic works where the age significantly varies between actor and character. However I think we lose a key theme of Cathy’s character which is found due to her youth when you cast a woman in her mid 30s.

My next issue was the serious omissions in this film. What I adore about the novel is how unreliable the narration is, but in this film we lose any nuance for the sake of more screen time for the sex scenes (I wish I was joking). We lose Mr Lockwood, Hindley AND all the second generation and even Nelly has been reduced to a one-dimensional character which has no substance. This story purely focuses on the sexual relations between Cathy and Heathcliffe and that is pretty much it.

Look, I knew walking in that this film was going to be an erotica, but my god I saw way too much of Jacob Elordi’s tongue in this, and that scene in the moor with Margot’s fingers confirmed my worst fears, this wasn’t a movie that was going to comment on the complexities of abuse and the impact that generational trauma, this was esentially a porno with good cinematography and a soundtrack that is trying its very best to make you feel something.

“‘Wuthering Heights’ is a two hour porn film with a half decent soundtrack and good cinematography ”

And now lets talk about the pacing - or maybe lack of pacing. This film was all over the place narrative wise, my friend Brian (you can find his review of “Wuthering Heights” here) and I both saw this film together, there was me a lover of the original work and some of the adaptations, and him a person who has never read Wuthering Heights nor seen any adaptation of it and there were times in this film where we were both equally lost and confused. There was absolutely no build to what was happening, it was like we were going from A-Z but skipping over all the other letters that add context and I hate to say it because I’ve said it too many times in this review, but NUANCE.

I touched on it before but the blatant uncritical use of erotica in this film completely degrades any message that the story is trying to tell (although I’m not even sure if there was a message in the first place). But the overt sexualisation of everything mad each unbearable minute feel like it was dragging on and on, no I DID NOT need to see Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi fingering egg yolks. To the woman in the cinema who was checking her phone, genuinely I thank you because it helped give a little indication of how much longer I had to sit through.

When done effectively, the use of sex scenes can tell an effective story and is able to evoke strong emotions that spark conversation. But every sex scene in “Wuthering Heights” is simply put in there to appeal to an uncritical audience who simply wish to froth over Robbie and Elordi. Not only is it disrespectful to the author it is also disrespectful to the audience. Does the creative team behind this film think that their target audience is so stupid that they are unable to understand a complex story?

“I’ve seen some reviewers who love the film say that its criticisms are rooted in misogyny. Well, I promise you my criticisms are rooted in the fact that I wasted two hours of my life watching this watered-down smut fest piece of garbage that deserves to be incinerated ”

Before we talk about my biggest criticism of the film we need to take a quick detour and talk about my favourite film of 2026, Hamnet. Now why are we talking about Hamnet you may ask? Well one of the key criticisms of the final scene of Hamnet is when the beautiful soundtrack is swelling and it truly is making you feel emotions that you may not feel had the soundtrack not been there. I believe ‘emotional torture porn’ was a word I was seen being thrown around.

“Wuthering Heights” tries to emulate these same feelings with the soundtrack in the most pivotal scene of the movie, Cathy’s death. In the book you feel a whole range of emotions swelling with Cathy’s death and everything that follows, it truly is a masterclass, so I thought if anything they NEED to get this right, I know Elordi and Robbie both have the acting ability to pull this off so surely I won’t be disappointed…

To say I was disappointed is an understatement.

Not only has this film decided to end with Cathy’s death, which I feel I don’t need to go into WHY this is such a big issue with this paticular story, but for those that haven’t read this book just know it’s as if they ended Star Wars with The Empire Strikes Back, with no intention of releasing any sequels. It leaves you with a bunch of unanswered questions and ultimately unsatisfied.

But the biggest crime I think this scene has is the fact that the soundtrack and the visuals are desperately trying to make you feel something, anything, but it was doing absolutely nothing for me. I felt completely numb and detached from everything I was seeing on screen and was counting down the minutes before I could leave, something which I feel you should never do while watching a movie.

“Wuthering Heights” is truly a film I don’t think I’ll ever forget, but that isn’t a good thing. The essence of everything found in this book is either erased completely or glossed over so much it doesn’t even feel like an ‘interpretation’ and I question what edition of Wuthering Heights was read by the creative team. Even when I tried (and I really did) to seperate this book from the original source material all I was given was a stale two hour film which wasted my time.

I feel like there’s not much more I can say about this film, I feel let down, angry and disgusted simultaneously, so I feel like the best course of action is for me to close this review with the wise words of Allain from Letterboxd who sums up my feelings the best.