Oscar-winning filmmaker Emerald Fennell teams up with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in her adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights.

Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been described in its synopsis as “a bold and original interpretation of one of the greatest love stories of all time.” Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) have a forbidden passion for each other, and their relationship goes from romantic to intoxicating in a film about lust, love, and madness. That’s really the gist of the film in a nutshell.

The 1847 novel has been adapted multiple times in multiple formats. One of the most famous adaptations was William Wyler’s Oscar-winning film starring Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier and David Niven. Regardless of adaptation, Brontë couldn’t even keep things straight when it comes to Heathcliff, describing the character as “dark-skinned,” “white,” and “pale.” Well, which is it? If it’s white and pale, then they did right by the role in casting Elordi. But if he’s dark-skinned and some scholars suggest that he is of African descent, what we have here with Elordi’s casting is a problem.

But despite whatever controversy there may be with the casting, Robbie and Elordi do share believable chemistry. You buy into the intensity of their early connection and the idea that those feelings linger years later, even as resentment takes root. Robbie plays Cathy with a restless energy that keeps the character from feeling entirely passive, while Elordi gives Heathcliff a brooding physicality that works best in the film’s quieter moments. When he returns three years later, newly wealthy and visually transformed, the shift signals growth on paper more than in practice. The emotional evolution never feels as layered as it needs to, which ultimately limits the impact of their tragic arc.

Wuthering Heights is no different than Saltburn when it comes to crafts like production design or costume design, even as Promising Young Woman earned one win in five Oscar nominations. But where it loses me is—I’m sorry to say—the pacing. Mind you, I didn’t look at my watch the first time until an hour into the film, but then the next time I looked, I didn’t think that it would be so few minutes that had passed. I’m not sure if that says more about the film or my attention span in watching a film running over two hours in length these days. Movies should not be this long.

Wuthering Heights is the type of film that will likely appeal to fans of Romanticism and Gothic melodrama. I’m not one of them, which may explain why I didn’t find it as “horny” or intoxicating as others have suggested. Still, personal taste only goes so far. Even allowing for my own distance from Victorian tragedy, the film’s emotional repetition and languid pacing kept it at arm’s length. Fennell clearly has a firm grasp of tone and aesthetic control, but as her films grow increasingly stylized and operatic, they’ve become less engaging for me. Gothic excess can be powerful; here, it often feels indulgent.

I’ve never read the book, so I’m not one to comment on the differences between them. But in looking over the novel’s plot, Fennell really plays loose with some of it. The filmmaker even admits to boiling the book down to the things that she “found exciting and subversive.” Will this be the same for everyone? I don’t know. But if you’re a fan of the Wuthering Heights novel, please do with that what you will.

In reshaping Brontë’s sprawling tragedy into something more streamlined and provocative, Fennell delivers a Wuthering Heights that is visually striking and intermittently compelling but dramatically uneven. The passion is present, and the craft is undeniable, yet the emotional payoff never fully materializes. For viewers already inclined toward Gothic melodrama, it may feel intoxicating. For others, it’s a handsomely mounted adaptation that ultimately proves more exhausting than devastating.

DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER: Emerald Fennell
CAST: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell

Warner Bros. Pictures will release Wuthering Heights in theaters on February 13, 2026. Grade: 2/5

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