“Wuthering Heights” (2026) review: An adaptation in name alone

Adapting an iconic piece of English literature proves to be too much for Emerald Fennell and Margot Robbie.

Emerald Fennell’s highly anticipated film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” (2026) finally arrives in theaters. Starring Australian actors Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, the project has carried controversy since its announcement. From criticism surrounding Elordi’s casting, to Fennell’s public commentary on her interpretive approach, to set photos featuring costuming seemingly out of step with the novel’s period, and a marketing campaign built around heavily sexualized teasers ahead of its Valentine’s Day release, every note was missing the mark.
“Wuthering Heights” is, to put it simply, not good. But if it were an original story, populated by different characters under different names, it would be at least adequate. A majority of its failure lies in the fact that it is supposed to be Wuthering Heights.

Did they read the book?

For those unfamiliar with Wuthering Heights and, therefore, unsure why criticism of the film has been so pointed, a brief foundation helps. First published in 1847 by Emily Brontë under the pen name Ellis Bell, the novel centers on two families — the Earnshaws and the Lintons — whose lives intertwine on the West Yorkshire moors through their relationship with Heathcliff, an orphan of ambiguous race, taken in by the Earnshaws. Blending Romanticism and Gothic fiction, the story interrogates love, possession, revenge, class, and race, and remains one of the most widely read and studied works in English literature.

Structurally, the novel is layered and cyclically haunting. It unfolds predominantly through the outsider perspective of the tenant, Mr. Lockwood, and the recollections of housekeeper Nelly Dean, expanding across decades and generations. Ghosts, time jumps, and narrative framing are not merely ornamental devices, but the entire shape of the story’s emotional and thematic weight. The film abandons this architecture entirely, stripping away the generational scope and supernatural unease that define the novel’s atmosphere.

Instead, “Wuthering Heights” offers a more simplified narrative fixated on Catherine (Robbie) and Heathcliff’s (Elordi) obsessive relationship, privileging erotic stylization and visual aestheticism over structural complexity. The cost of that simplification is immediate and telling.

Generational consequences.

These Gothic elements being removed signal the film’s refusal to engage with something deeper: the temporal instability that allows past and present to bleed into one another. This structural flattening foreshadows the adaptation’s greatest failure which is its refusal to reckon with generational consequence. Instead, the material is reconfigured.

The opens not on the moors but at a public hanging, watched with delight by a young Catherine and Nelly as the camera lingers with provocative intent on the condemned man’s body. Designed to shock and establish tonal transgression, the sequence announces the film’s priorities immediately. From there, the narrative centers on Heathcliff’s upbringing within Wuthering Heights, a household defined by cruelty and hierarchy.

Heathcliff is treated like an animal rather than a fully realized person, and this imbalance carries into his relationship with Catherine. Their childhood bond unfolds through shared mischief and violence, always within a dynamic that positions him beneath her; when he accepts punishment meant for her and vows loyalty, the film gestures toward obsessive devotion that it will later foreground above all else.

As the film segues to adulthood and introduces the Linton household, it leans into Catherine’s social transformation. Yet Robbie’s visible maturity complicates Catherine’s lingering childishness, creating an unwelcome dissonance rather than character depth.

A discomforting pivot

Heathcliff’s return — wealthy, composed, and newly gentlemanly — pivots the story toward physicality. His dynamic with Catherine becomes intensely sexual, framed through secrecy and passion rather than psychological entanglement; presented as romance, it registers more convincingly as volatility. When that obsession fractures, Heathcliff redirects himself toward Isabella in a revenge arc staged through humiliation, coerced performance, and sexualized power play. These sequences repeatedly bring more provocation than anything else, reducing emotional stakes to aestheticized discomfort rather than deepening character exploration.

Catherine’s decline unfolds in feverish melodrama of confinement, instability, bodily deterioration, and death while Heathcliff’s grief becomes operatic spectacle, culminating in his plea that she haunt him beyond mortality. Yet the film refuses to interrogate consequence, luxuriating instead in nostalgic echo and eternal devotion. In doing so, “Wuthering Heights” reduces itself to doomed romance and erotic display: narratively streamlined, visually striking, and emotionally barren.

Missing the entire point.

One of Wuthering Heights’s core themes is cycles. Cycles of abuse, trauma, and generational grief. Skip the second half of the novel, and the cycle breaks. The story flattens. Its point evaporates. Its ghosts… well, they don’t exist so how can they haunt at all? Fennell seems hellbent on turning “Wuthering Heights” into a sweeping romance, a tale of passion that death cannot conquer. As a fan of Gothic, obsessive love stories, Heathcliff’s longing for Catherine, his desire to have her haunt him forever, is undeniably romantic.

But that is not what the novel is about. Brontë’s masterpiece interrogates class, race, revenge, and abuse — all of which are mostly absent or superficial in the film. The romance is only one facet of a story that is otherwise dark, morally complicated, and structurally ingenious.

A massive casting mistake.

Jacob Elordi’s casting as Heathcliff was controversial from the start, and for good reason. In Brontë’s novel, Heathcliff’s precise ethnic background is never explicitly defined, yet he is consistently described in ways that mark him as racially and socially other  Literary scholars have long emphasized this, such as Dr. Reginald Watson, in Images of Blackness in the Works of Charlotte and Emily Brontë.

Casting Heathcliff as a white man erases that tension. What remains is not Brontë’s socially marked outsider but a familiar Gothic archetype — the brooding Byronic antihero — stripped of the structural prejudice that gives the character much of his narrative impact.

There are plenty of sins to count.

The film commits other damning missteps. It portrays Isabella as complicit in her own abuse, suggesting she desires the humiliation Heathcliff inflicts. In the novel, Isabella is anything but willing. She is genuinely miserable in her decision to marry Heathcliff and ultimately removes herself from the situation. This shift not only distorts her character but erases the novel’s commentary on coercion, power, and victimhood.

The costuming and sets clearly aim to make bold statements, but they often feel like they exist to generate viral TikTok content rather than serve the story. Tumblr GIF-sets captioned “the most beautiful shots in Wuthering Heights” will surely abound. Some shots are stunning, but the beauty comes at the expense of the narrative.

Charli XCX’s electronic, club-style soundtrack is a fascinating idea; juxtaposing modern beats with the windswept moors. Yet the film undermines its own audacity by repeatedly switching to classical orchestral music. The result is tonal whiplash. These striking visuals and sound never quite sync with the mess of the story; as if the filmmakers were simply too indecisive to pick a consistent sound.

Is “Wuthering Heights” (2026) sexy, at least?

Now, the topic everyone really wants to talk about: the sex. If it wasn’t already clear, sex is not explicit in Brontë’s novel. This film, however, markets itself as intensely erotic. That marketing is a lie. Wuthering Heights (2026) simply isn’t sexy.
There’s no nudity, which is fine — nudity is not necessary for sexiness. But instead of exploring eroticism through tension, clothing, or intimacy, Fennell seems obsessed with shock-value sex scenes that fail to be genuinely sexy.

The sequences are bewildering: Elordi’s long fingers in smushed egg yolks, a Wuthering Heights servant kneading dough, two servants engaging in ponyplay with a bridle, Heathcliff covering Catherine’s eyes and mouth as she watches said ponyplay, Heathcliff licking a wall painted to resemble Catherine’s skin, and Heathcliff chaining Isabella to the fireplace.

The result is chaotic, confusing, and more absurd than erotic. Each of these scenes are performative, edgy moments that ultimately distract from any real storytelling or sensual tension. It’s all supposedly designed to make you gasp, and yet it’s unbearably boring. There’s greater titillation watching Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth brush hands in Pride and Prejudice. 

Some relief hides in the margins.

On the positive side, the child actors — Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper, who play young Catherine and Heathcliff — are genuinely wonderful. Their chemistry and energy capture the intensity of the novel’s early years far better than the adult portrayals manage.

To be fair to Elordi, he does as well as he can with what he’s given, though that doesn’t excuse the fundamental miscasting. Alison Oliver as Isabella is fantastic; she brings nuance and depth to a character who in the source material is sympathetic and tragic. It’s just a literal disgrace to her performance that the screenplay rewrites Isabella in ways that undermine her agency and misery.

The bottom line.

Had this been an original story with new characters, it might have been at least mildly entertaining. Not brilliant, but watchable. Instead, it’s Wuthering Heights in name only. It’s a story stripped of its Gothic intensity, its cycles of generational trauma, and its exploration of class, race, and revenge.

The romance, the so-called “sexiness,” the glossy visuals — none of it makes up for what the story loses. What’s left is a hollow shell, all shock value and aesthetic flourishes. “Wuthering Heights” (2026) is devoid of the darkness, moral complexity, and emotional weight that made Brontë’s novel endure for almost 180 years.

Wuthering Heights (2026) is now playing in theaters. Watch the trailer here.

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Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.