Wuthering Heights review: ‘Drive me crazy?’ But this Margot-Jacobs movie hardly makes waves
Wuthering Heights movie review: Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation struggles to capture the emotional depth of the novel. The film’s central romance fails to ignite, leaving the audience detached and unengaged.
Such stories are so elemental, so steeped in literary wisdom, that any attempt to reinterpret them feels like trying to touch electricity. Wuthering HeightsEmily Brontë’s massive 1847 novel is one such story. This latest film adaptation from Emerald Fennell is a stark reminder that some classics are perhaps better left alone.
Set on the eerie, windswept Yorkshire moors, the film traces the cruel and destructive relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. The bond that is born of passion, wounded pride and emotional dependency, and which resonates across generations. Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), an orphan taken in by Catherine’s (Margot Robbie) father, grows up with her, forming a relationship that is intimate and volatile at the same time. But class divisions and social expectations soon separate their paths, beginning a cycle of cruelty, vengeance, and inherited trauma that defines Brontë’s Gothic world.
Fennell has repeatedly presented this as her own singular interpretation of the novel. That creative license is required. But this version feels less like a fresh lens and more like a private language, one that assumes encyclopedic familiarity with the source text, while offering little emotional entry point for the uninitiated. Even Gen Z accustomed to fragmented storytelling may find themselves searching for meaning rather than feeling it. The film comes across like an emotional frost: cold, opaque, and barely warm.
The irony is hard to ignore. Brontë’s novels thrive on forbidden love, generational trauma, and brutal class hierarchy. This is raw, hurtful material that is begging to be displayed on screen. Instead, the film tinkers with these ideas to turn them into a steamy, dirty erotic romance that never fully commits. There is nothing inherently wrong with bringing out sexuality. part of passion Wuthering Heights‘ Enduring DNA But if you’re leaning toward physicality, there’s a price to pay. Here, scenes designed to stimulate the senses barely register. The camera lingers, Charli XCX tries to score, yet the pulse never really quickens.
“Don’t sigh at me,” Cathy says to Nellie (Hong Chau) in a key scene. Ironically, all I did was sigh in frustration throughout the entire 2 hour 16 minute duration.
This deficiency is most pronounced in the central pair. Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff bring undeniable star power and individual craft. Robbie’s performance is controlled and precise, while Elordi, especially in the latter half, imbues the film with an anxious physicality as Heathcliff undergoes a sharp tonal shift. But together, their chemistry remains stubbornly dormant. There’s no spark, no crack, no moment that makes you emotionally invest in their arc. A romance defined by longing, suffering and tragedy is painstakingly made dull.
Ironically, the emotional core of the film lies elsewhere. Owen Cooper, as young Heathcliff, and Charlotte Mellington, as young Catherine, give the most affecting parts. His scenes, marked by innocence, hurt and an innate hunger for belonging, evoke more emotion than anything shared by the adult leads. When the youngest characters carry the emotional burden in a story known for its angst, it speaks volumes about what’s missing at the center.
Technically the film oscillates between intention and indecision. Robbie’s period costumes, in particular, seem torn between era authenticity and visual spectacle, an apt metaphor for the film’s larger identity crisis.
Ultimately, no amount of aesthetic polish can save a romance if its central relationship fails to excite you. Wuthering Heights should make you ache, recoil and yearn, not sit in detached admiration, waiting for the feelings to arrive.
Heathcliff asks, “Drive me mad.” it Wuthering Heights Never dares.
