For lovers of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, this film is barely recognisable. In fact, the narrative has been so dumbed down and devolved that it sinks below a measurable IQ.
The much-hyped Margot Robbie is miscast in the role of Cathy, if you’re thinking of a parallel, Robbie as Elizabeth I would be a close match. Jacob Elordi channels more Gen Z crybaby than anguished Heathcliff.
Directed by actress Emerald Fennell, who also adapted the screenplay, the film opens with a heavy-handed public hanging which foreshadows its obsession with unctuous substances, bodily fluids and/or masturbation. (Roll of eyes.)
The script, sets and costumes sit somewhere between fan fiction and Alice in Wonderland, with Robbie frocked up like a strumpet who’s wandered in from a local cosplay. Despite the moorland weather, the freezing winds and even her father’s funeral, every dress (bar one) boasts a plunging neckline. (It’s a surprise she didn’t catch her death sooner!)
Unlike the novel, where Heathcliff and Cathy’s love is a deeply spiritual and unconsummated affair, this 2026 reimagining has the duo bonking like rabbits — which, rather than heightening the sexual tension, raises it to a level of tedium not experienced since the candlelit drift of Barry Lyndon. Think more lurid, toxic-semi-porn than metaphysical romance.
The soundtrack is equally heavy-handed, with shrill lyrics attempting to make up for holes in the screenplay. As for the dialogue — with the exception of the few lines lifted from Brontë herself — it is eye-wateringly, cringeworthingly, chronically awful.
Martin Clunes (Doc Martin) hams up a Mr Earnshaw who somewhere along the line has been merged with Hindley. Poor Nelly Dean (Hong Chau), also miscast, has been thoroughly soured — and Lord help us, we have Isabella Linton in S & M-like dog-chains.
Dare we progress to Linton? Shazad Latif, also out of place, is here rendered so sexually obsessed with Cathy that he decorates their bedroom in flesh-coloured wall upholstery, complete with painted veins and freckles. The ‘ick’ factor looms large. Shades of Saltburn?
Any other film or TV version of this story is preferable to this one. How does a director with an 80-million-dollar budget manage to trash such a great literary classic?
It is not merely that this film is a gross misrepresentation of the book — all art is entitled to reimagine art; a successful example might be Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. Rather, it removes all that is noble and pure and replaces it with something tawdry and so much smaller. 
No doubt, those that haven’t read the book will flock to it like lemmings over a (Heath) cliff.
My Rating:  Tortuous and not in a good way.
Moor-level misery! Read the book or get a refund before you go in