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Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi and directed by Emerald Fennell
Trailer: Warner Bros.

Wuthering Heights (2026)
Directed by Emerald Fennell
Rated R
Loved 13 February 2026
#WutheringHeightsMovie

Emerald Fennell brings her typical panache and sass to Emily Brontë’s classic story, but this tale of agonized yearning and tormented love still yields some pangs of disappointment.

Hang On

Fennell opens her version of Wuthering Heights playfully. As production company logos display, there’s the faint sound of a man moaning and groaning accompanied by what would seem to be the sound of a bed creaking and squeaking. Ah. But it’s not. As the screen fades in, the man is revealed to be hanging from the gallows in a public square. The crowd below him delights in his execution.

It’s certainly an effective way to set the stage and the tone in a way that sets this version apart from all those other productions through the decades.

Young Cathy is seen in the crowd and she’s quite upset by the disturbing event. Rather inexplicably, back home at Wuthering Heights, she’s in tears while sitting in front of a couple of handcrafted, partially dressed dolls that appear to be having sex.

It’s 1770s Yorkshire, England, and it’s rough out there. And some behaviors are best held in deep, dark secrecy.

Cathy’s burdened not only by the dark and dreary moors, but also the dark and dreary confines of Wuthering Heights, her black-brick home where she lives with her dark and dreary drunkard father.

A brutal, abusive man, Cathy’s father sees himself as quite the compassionate gentleman of society, particularly when he “adopts” a boy Cathy’s age. She takes to him instantly and sees him as her pet. She names him Heathcliff, after her deceased brother. They bond quickly and form a tender alliance wherein each has the other’s back.

On a superficial level, theirs is a love story perfectly suitable for a Valentine’s Day weekend theatrical release. But, really, theirs is a tale of psychological games and emotional abuse. What starts with innocence and devotion devolves over the years into betrayal and tragedy.

Bridled Love

But let’s back up. Kind of like Brontë did with her novel, first published in 1847, only one year before she died at the too-young age of 30. She starts in the wake of the stormy, tragic relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff, then reveals their tortured history.

Wuthering Heights as a novel – as a concept – is in itself a rather remarkable thing. This isn’t the time or the place to try to unpack all things Brontë and the scandalous story she crafted. However, all those questions of where those ideas originated – their sources of inspiration – still manage to permeate the screen.

While Wuthering Heights is indeed a romance, it’s a brutal story of unsavory people and behaviors in a Victorian society that would rather turn a blind eye and pretend none of those things existed. The parallels to today’s headlines are too numerous to even fathom, but that’s not Fennell’s focus. Some of her storytelling sensibilities and humor are decidedly modern, but her movie is loosely faithful to the source material. Of course, the narrative is dramatically streamlined and pared down to a much simpler structure, starting with young Cathy and Heathcliff, then following them to their very, very bitter end.

To Fennell’s credit, she gets terrific performances from the young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) and young Heathcliff (Owen Cooper). Both make astonishing feature debuts here – especially considering the heavy material they’re working with – and both hold the promise of exciting careers yet to unfold.

It’s a suitably artistic transition between the bloody sleepwear of young Heathcliff to the scarred bare back of the older friend and love interest. For the bulk of the movie, it’s the beauty of Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff that fills the screen and raises the heart rates of those lustful members in the audience. The chemistry between the two is decent (or sufficiently indecent, if you prefer), but it doesn’t generate enough heat to melt the screen. Even so, raw dough and cracked eggs will never be seen the same way again.

Reigning Men

Some of the shortcomings in Fennell’s movie are also shortcomings in the source material. There’s the reliance on a partially heard conversation and the oh-so-subtle betrayal of a lifelong mutual friend (Nelly, in this case) which sets in motion a series of decisions, actions and emotions that ultimately lead to heartbreak and a profound sense of loss (along with – most definitely – the anguish of missed opportunities) .

Given its setting, this is a world in which women have limited opportunities and their aspirations tend toward securing a comfortable life by landing a wealthy man.

It’s no different for Cathy, who moves out from the darkness of her father, Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), and into the vibrant, lavish home of the wealthy Edgar (Shazad Latif). After all, Heathcliff is a peasant with a future unsuitable for the vivacious and desirable Cathy. Forget their upbringing, their friendship, their devotion to each other, their unspoken love.

And that leads to another Brontë shortcoming. As an apparent act of revenge, Heathcliff runs away and comes back years later as a wealthy man in his own right. He even buys Wuthering Heights. But no serious explanation is given anywhere, so let’s just go with the colorful thought of him having become a pirate. Perhaps he sailed on the Black Pearl for a spell.

After nearly 180 years, those narrative shortcomings are part of the package.

Nonetheless, while Fennell punches up the action with some clever humor (including a witty bit recounting the drama of Romeo and Juliet), Wuthering Heights’ biggest disappointment is in the presentation itself.

Keep in mind Fennell’s grand creativity with Promising Young Woman and the jaw-dropping devilishness of Saltburn. Wuthering Heights doesn’t have the cinematic sweep the material demands and modern filmmaking can provide. The property of Wuthering Heights itself is at first an interesting setting, but as it’s revealed, it takes on too many trappings of a standard movie set. It never becomes a character in and of itself, which it could and – in this view – should.

Drama Queen

There’s plenty of rain. And a suitable amount of countryside. But they’re not exploited to the best extent possible. There’s no sense of sweep and the cold desolation simply isn’t sufficient as presented here by Linus Sandgren, who’s captured many great moments in movies including No Time to Die, La La Land and Fennell’s Saltburn.

The sets – particularly the posh, decadent furnishings of Edgar’s estate – offer loads of clever and creative details, which certainly add to a fun factor that helps counter the overwhelming doom of Brontë’s story.

That visual disappointment in cinematography is also countered by some great lines of dialogue that transcend time and media.

“He’s more myself than I am.”

“Peace with you is worse than war.”

“My despair seems to be your good fortune.”

All told, amid the despair, the treachery, the scenes of domination and forbidden behaviors in stables and other locations, there’s an equal heartache that sets in from wishing for a telling of Wuthering Heights that offered a little bit more and the sense of loss the movie’s missed opportunities yield.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.