Wuthering Heights: Movie Review

Cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Shazad Latif
Director: Emerald Fennell

The long-awaited Wuthering Heights remake emerges onto the cinematic screen in a mixture of would-be Gothic grotesquerie and lust.

The 2026 version of the Emily Bronte classic opens with a dark screen, the sound of creaking and moaning bleeding from the speakers.

It’s meant to signify something seductive and illicit, but director Emerald Fennell’s penchant for misdirection here kicks in and the film lures you in, promising one thing and delivering another.

And yet, in many ways, as it takes on the tale of revenge-fuelled would-be lovers Cathy and Heathcliff, the overlong film follows a more traditional route than the time-swapping narrative and leans into the snark and dark humour among the pastel-filled fever dream that Fennell created with Promising Young Woman and Saltburn.

Early scenes focus on Heathcliff being brought into Wuthering Heights by Cathy’s monstrous father (Doc Martin’s Martin Clunes as you’ve never seen him) and their relationship developing as she gets to keep him like a pet.

Fast-forward a few years and Cathy, all petulance, pride and prissiness, is now grown-up (with Robbie inhabiting the wide-eyed role) and at a loss with her lot in life. Worried her father’s corraling and gambling has ruined them, and obsessed with the rich neighbours that have moved in, she heads to meet the Lintons, before injuring herself and unable to return for weeks.

When she does, she’s a changed woman, one who seems more hellbent on pursuing her awakening desires until a single moment separates her and Heathcliff for years…

“Wuthering Heights”, as Fennell has deemed it, captures the lusty confused desire of teenage years and sets it against the aesthetics that its director has become known for.

Vibrant colours burst out from the screen as Cathy herself blooms and a dollhouse motif that’s used throughout hints at her own frustrations in among the Gothic architecture and wind-swept landscapes of the wild moor on her doorstep.

And yet, in amongst the sumptuous visuals and thrillingly evocative score and solid performances, there’s little to grasp onto for emotional depth here. Whether it’s deliberate or not, not once does the tragedy of the piece feel like it’s come to the fore. Both Heathcliff and Cathy are monstrous and selfish in their own ways, their obsessions fuelled by a twisted revenge that only harms themselves, rather than those around them.

Lashings of humour outweigh the growing sense of toxic nastiness – particularly Alison Oliver’s Lady Isabelle, a girl lost and oblivious to the world around her, obsessed with dolls and crafting them from people’s actual hair.

In truth, “Wuthering Heights” could have lost maybe 20 minutes or so, and still have fit the director’s desires – but its sex-fuelled desire and longing still feels as relevant today as it did then – even if the film’s occasionally shallow take on the complexities of Bronte’s work is lost to a 21^st century audience.