I Finally Watched the Wuthering Heights Movie
Because it's important to be an informed hater
Thank you to everyone who came out for my Block Club Chicago event on Monday, despite the Wuthering Heights-esque stormy weather! Sorry not sorry if I seemed less excited to see you than I was to see this dog sitting at a table in Jarvis Square Tavern like an extremely distinguished gentleman:
Since Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights film came out back in February, I’ve been asked at pretty much every author event, book club, etc. what I thought of it. Well, I finally watched it, so this time I had a real, informed answer! And now as promised, I have an even longer, more informed rant for you, my beloved Substack readers.
It should surprise no one that I hated it. It did surprise me, however, that I hated it far more than I thought I would (and I thought I would hate it a lot). It was the most infuriating Wuthering Heights adaptation I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen nearly all of them.
Let’s start, though, with a few things I liked (spoilers ahead, obviously):
The soundtrack full of Charli xcx bangers
The bonkers production design, especially the bedroom decorated to look like Cathy’s skin
The weird sapphic obsession vibes between Isabella and Cathy (now that is an adaptation of Wuthering Heights I’d love to see!), even though I’m not 100% sure they were intentional
The sex scene where Heathcliff is describing to Cathy exactly how he’ll kill Edgar, which even though it’s not from the novel felt more like Wuthering Heights to me than anything else on screen
And… that’s all. I hated everything else. So let’s get into it.
There’s Jacob Elordi as White Heathcliff of course, which I’ve already ranted about on many occasions — although now that I’ve seen the movie, I’m almost relieved Fennell didn’t cast an actor of color as Heathcliff, cause she does not seem capable of handling the nuance of his canonical identity.
Shazad Latif’s Edgar Linton being of South Asian descent and Hong Chau’s Nelly Dean being the bastard daughter of a lord could have been interesting, but the script didn’t explore it beyond a throwaway line from Mr. Earnshaw about how he’s willing to “overlook” Edgar and Nelly’s racial differences. And don’t even get me started on how this adaptation villainizes Nelly, putting the blame on her for all sorts of things that are not her doing in the novel (including Cathy’s death!).
My favorite aspect of Wuthering Heights is the complex power dynamics between the characters, and Fennell’s script flattens all of them into something either far less interesting or outright offensive. For example, she cuts Cathy’s abusive brother Hindley, giving his worst qualities to her father Mr. Earnshaw instead.
Hindley is a fascinating, complex antagonist because he’s traumatized too, deeply hurt by his father’s clear preference for Heathcliff. Fennell’s drunken, cruel Mr. Earnshaw, on the other hand, is nothing but a cartoon villain. And combining those characters means that, rather than going from relative equality while her father is alive to insurmountable class difference once Hindley takes over the estate, Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship is a cliché rich girl + stable boy trope from the start.
Then of course there’s Heathcliff and Isabella. Reading the novel, you’re forced to grapple with the fact that this man who claims to love Cathy with all his tortured soul is also an absolute psychopathic monster to his wife. Fennell tries to elide all that by making Isabella a willing participant in their dynamic, even while portraying her as so childish and naive, you have to question whether she’s capable of giving meaningful consent. It’s not a bold, edgy choice, it’s gross and reductive.
Before watching Wuthering Heights, I often said I wished Emerald Fennell had made an original Gothic romance with the same cast instead of this so-called adaptation. Let Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi be horny for each other on the moors, just leave Emily Brontë out of it! But now I have to eat those words, because y’all: this movie was profoundly, shockingly unsexy.
For all the humping and heavy breathing, there was zero heat. All the scenes that were meant to be titillating felt eyerollingly cringe — or worse, completely boring, which is something Wuthering Heights should never be. Despite the full monster drag, Jacob Elordi had way more chemistry with Mia Goth in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein than he did with anyone at any point in this movie.
Anyway, thank you to Emerald Fennell for releasing this film during the 2026 Winter Olympics and giving me one of my best sales weeks for The Favorites yet! Looking forward to never watching this piece of trash again in my life ✌️ (though I’m sure I’ll still be asked about it at many future Favorites events…)
Next week: a recap of my experience at Stars on Ice! (Unless I pass away from gay panic upon encountering Amber Glenn at the post-show meet and greet, that is.)
Oh my gosh, I cannot wait for you to meet Jason Brown at the M&G (assuming you haven’t died from meeting Amber). He’s literally pure joy in human form.
Definitely agree on all the parts that you agree with, and oddly, I agree with your final take on Elordi's casting (as does Fennell!). There are so many tricky nuances to his character as written, such as how closely it aligns to Victorian racial attitudes, that it takes a special director to cast a poc without furthering those proto-white supremacy ideas. That's not Fennell (she said as much), and that's not Andrea Arnold as we saw from her 2011 adaptation.
How the power dynamics were shown I absolutely loved: characters with more power in a higher position than their conversation partner. Adds another dimension to the relationships, and visually it's strengthened by Elordi being as enormous as he is, and the subtle way he raises and lowers himself within a scene to indicate a power shift. The perfect example is the sex scene you mentioned, where there are 4 shifts as their emotions and relationship goes through several rapid changes. It's masterful.
I love that you raised whether Isabella can give meaningful consent! That's exactly the conversation we should be having, and I'm sure it's intentional on Fennell’s part. Note that the book forces us to ask the same question via the discrepancies in the Heathcliff and Isabella accounts: he says she knew what he was, he 'warned' her by hanging her dog. We the readers also know she was warned by Cathy, Nelly, and Edgar. The book asks us how much she's complicit in what happens next. At the very least, it complicates her 'victimhood'. Fennell clearly didn't want to show physical abuse, and she foregrounds consent in the seduction scene. But Heathcliff's coldness and mistreatment starts immediately in the wedding scene, showing us that whatever Isabella verbally agreed too, she didn't have these expectations. So yes, you're dead on with that complexity.
Regarding chemistry and eroticism, thoughts there are mixed but a lot of people agreed with you it wasn't sexy. Also a lot of people cannot stop thinking about the chair, the corset, the eggs, the barn scene. It rattled around the brains of a lot of people for months.
Thank you for your analysis! I've really enjoyed reading breakdowns of the film even if I disagree with some of them. I've never seen a film this layered and detailed, so researched it for months, finding about 300 references to art, lit, Victorian culture and history, and of course the novel.