Let’s get one thing straight before we even start — the new Wuthering Heights is not your English lit teacher’s Wuthering Heights. It is not Laurence Olivier brooding at a fireplace. It is not even Ralph Fiennes howling at a grave in the rain. Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is something wilder, sweatier, and somehow more alive than all of those versions put together. And it is completely, gloriously deranged — in the best possible way.
So What Even IS This Movie?
Released on Valentine’s Day 2026 (peak chaos energy), Wuthering Heights is Fennell’s loose adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel. We’re talking loosely, people. Like, she had the book, she read it at 14 and fell completely apart over it, and then she decided to bottle that exact teenage-girl-brain feeling and turn it into a major Warner Bros. movie. The result? A two-hour-sixteen-minute fever dream set on the windswept Yorkshire Moors that critics are calling ‘Bridgerton with a touch of Fifty Shades of Grey, directed by Tim Burton.’ If that sentence made you immediately open Fandango, we get it.
The story follows Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) — two people so obsessively, catastrophically in love that they’d rather destroy each other than be with anyone else. It’s the original toxic relationship, and Fennell leans into every single second of it. No apologies. No ‘actually let’s talk about our feelings.’ Just passion, revenge, and some absolutely stunning cinematography from Linus Sandgren that makes even the most unhinged scenes look like they belong in a museum.
The Cast: Two Australians Making It Very Hard to Breathe
Margot Robbie as Cathy is a fascinating, brave choice that has the internet divided like a pizza-topping debate. She’s reckless, selfish, childish in the best Brontë tradition — and Robbie commits so fully you forget she was literally Barbie two years ago. Critics are split: some say she’s miscast (Collider went there, calling it ‘completely unremarkable’). Others say she’s ‘in full bloom’ (The Hollywood Reporter). The truth is probably somewhere in the middle — she’s doing the work; the role just doesn’t let her breathe.
Jacob Elordi, though? He was born for this role. Fennell literally wrote the script with his sideburns in mind — the ones he had in Saltburn gave her flashbacks to the Heathcliff illustration on her childhood copy of the book. That’s the lore, and it’s beautiful. Elordi brings a dark, brooding physicality to Heathcliff that makes everyone in the theater very aware of their own heartbeat. Critics across the board agree: if you weren’t on the Jacob Elordi train before, this movie is your on-ramp.
What Fennell Changed (And Why Book Fans Are Losing Their Minds)
Here’s where it gets spicy. Fennell made some massive changes from Brontë’s novel. Hindley — Cathy’s brother and arguably the second most important character in the book — is completely cut. His role gets absorbed into Cathy’s father instead. The entire second half of the novel (Cathy and Edgar’s daughter, Heathcliff’s son, the next generation’s drama) is gone. The movie ends with Cathy’s death, which is actually the midpoint of the book. And Heathcliff, who in the source material is described as ‘dark-skinned,’ is played by a 6’5″ blond Australian.
Fennell’s reasoning? She doesn’t think you can adapt Wuthering Heights — you can only make a ‘version’ of it. Her film is in literal quotation marks in its title for exactly that reason. Some fans respect the philosophical honesty. Others are writing very long Reddit threads about it. Both reactions are valid.
The Charli XCX Factor
Nobody asked for a Charli XCX soundtrack on a 19th-century gothic romance. Nobody asked, and yet here we are, and it somehow works in a completely unhinged way. The music hits like an electric shock against Jacqueline Durran’s period costumes and Suzie Davies’ immaculate production design. It’s anachronistic. It’s bold. It’s exactly the kind of creative swing that will make this film feel totally fresh on a rewatch five years from now.
Is It Worth Seeing?
Yes. Not because it’s a perfect film — it isn’t. The first act is stronger than the second, the chemistry between Robbie and Elordi is steamy-but-not-always-electric, and at 2 hours 16 minutes, it runs a little long. But Wuthering Heights is the rare big-budget movie that actually swings for something — a full-sensory, emotionally overwhelming experience that trusts its audience to come along for the ride. It’s already at $152 million worldwide and climbing. Fennell is officially one of the most fearless directors working today.
Go see it on the biggest screen you can find. Take someone who will hold your hand during the dramatic bits and argue with you about it over coffee afterward. That’s what Wuthering Heights has always deserved.
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