WUTHERING HEIGHTS REVIEW!

Written by Kimaya Gupte 09/04/2026.

You’ve heard about blind movie reviews. Now, I’m going to take it up a notch and “review” a movie that I have never seen, and passionately refuse to ever see, on principle and out of adoration of the book. I’ve read reviews, subreddits, and even dared to go as far as watching the trailer. All I have to say is that thank God Emily Brontë died 178 years ago, because Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation of Wuthering Heights would have definitely killed her. Let’s go through everything (that I can currently think of) wrong with it. 

Starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, this abomination was released just in time for Valentine’s Day, and was marketed as being “inspired by the greatest love story of all time”, which I can only assume is referring to the romance between protagonists Cathy and Heathcliff. I say this because I worry for any person whose definition of great love is what these characters have. Of course, Emily Brontë being who she was, I can’t deny that this book genuinely had some of the most beautiful, heartbreaking, romantic lines I’ve ever read, although that doesn’t change the fact that the love story in this book often feels like a satire. This is a hill that I will die on. 

The interactions between Heathcliff and Cathy in the later parts of the book are dripping with sarcasm, and read as a mockery of any love that one might think takes place between them. This is because of what I believe is the strongest theme ascertainable in this book, and the one that Fennell spun on its head the worst. While Heathcliff and Cathy may have loved each other, they loved themselves more. Both of them were so disgustingly self-absorbed, their narcissism even shines through in some of the things they say about each other. And while some might consider this a stretch on my part, they can argue with the wall.

Cathy saying that “whatever our souls are made of, his and [hers] are the same,” is, sure, poetic, but can also be interpreted as her saying “I love him because he reminds me of myself.”  I promise, I can defend this stance for hours, but for the sake of not turning this article into an extensive literary analysis, I’ll just say that this is even further proven by the fact that Cathy literally decided not to marry Heathcliff because he was a poor outcast, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing her status and lifestyle. Isabella, on the other hand, could.

Isabella. Where to even begin with this. While reading the novel, my first impression of Isabella was that she was a lovesick teenager romanticizing a handsome, mysterious cynic, the same way a lot of BookTok- obsessed teens do nowadays. She lost this starry-eyed infatuation with him once Heathcliff’s character was revealed to her upon their marriage. 

Like please. 

He threw a knife at her face. 

Isabella quickly proved herself to not be the obsessed admirer I had thought her to be, with the way she stood up to him and cleverly planned her escape from Heathcliff’s clutches. She stumbled through the vast, unforgiving moors in a storm while injured and bleeding in order to get away from her abuser, because, yeah, she was a victim of domestic violence, perpetrated by someone who would have 100% killed her in due time. She was manipulated, and eventually found the strength to break free. 

And what does this accursed motion picture do? It massacres Isabella’s character, heinously turning her into someone who derives pleasure from being treated the way Heathcliff treats her. It twists her into a stupid, bratty, childish girl who enjoys degradation and fetishizes it. Can I say that? As a female director, Emerald Fennell is part of a minority, and from what I can find, some of her other works do have themes of feminism. Well, she should consider all the feminist messages she’s ever communicated blown to pieces with this movie. What kind of feminist turns a survivor of domestic violence into a laughingstock for the world to mock? Why are we belittling Isabella and unraveling the entire point of her character? Oh, I have so much more to say about this. 

Okay, so I asked those questions while knowing the answers full well. Isabella’s storyline simply could not exist with Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff. Once again, ignoring all of Brontë’s clues, Fennell decided the most important part of this story was how well the love story sold, and how could she take care of that without casting someone conventionally attractive by today’s beauty standards? If you’ve been on social media in the past few months, you’ll have seen people taking pride in having absorbed nothing about the movie but the fact that Jacob Elordi was in it.

And because Heathcliff’s cool and attractive now, all the monstrosities he’s committed are suddenly cool and attractive too. Even the fact that he hung Isabella’s puppy to get Cathy’s attention. I can’t bother checking to see if that was even included in the movie at all. It’s genuinely worrying to me what it says about society that we’ve romanticized what was intended to be a deranged, sick monster, and turned him into just another misunderstood heartthrob (this isn’t to say that he wasn’t misunderstood). And because of the nature of movies – being more accessible than books – and how popular this one got, it’s likely that the character will be better remembered for the movie’s portrayal of him than the novel’s. It’s a catastrophe. 

And actually one that Brontë predicted. To return to my first impression of Isabella, I think that she does a great job of representing the romanticization of violence and cruelty that is definitely a very relevant and prominent issue in today’s world. No offense – except all of it – to people that get all of their reading recs from that one side of BookTok. Isabella married the subject of her infatuation; a man she hardly knew. Likewise, fans of Fennell’s movies around the world are claiming their love for a warped version of an awful character that they do not understand. 

Onto another sin that’s so obvious it might not even be worth mentioning. Heathcliff in this movie is white, while in the book, he was described as a “gipsy,” an archaic and now offensive term for a person of South-Asian ethnicity. He was described as “dark-skinned,” multiple times. This wouldn’t be a problem if his appearance didn’t affect his storyline. But it does. Heathcliff’s entire thing is that he became a monster because he was treated like one. Why was he treated like a monster? Because people in 19th century England weren’t the most educated about the correlation between melanin and character. Now, if we take away this fundamental part about his background, it suggests that Heathcliff probably grew up just as privileged as anyone else who looked like Jacob Elordi did in that time period. Therefore, he’s only evil because sometimes, people are just bad for no reason, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Which is an awful way to look at life. 

Well, anyway, this would apply if Fennell’s Heathcliff’s personality was at least true to Brontë’s Heathcliff’s. And I think I’ve already sufficiently established that it’s not. 

A related thing that I haven’t seen discussed on the internet at all is the fact that melanin actually affects the portrayal of other characters, too. Take Isabella and Edgar Linton, played by the actors shown below. I’d like to make it clear that this is NOT an attack on the actors. But for people who are playing siblings, they might not be the best duo to have picked. 

Not only that, but the Lintons’s entire thing was that they were extremely pale, with flaxen hair and super light eyes. And I promise, it’s important. They were written this way to, believe it or not, show a stark contrast between Cathy’s two suitors: Heathcliff and Edgar, for better or for worse. You can interpret it any way you like. You could say that Edgar was meant to be superior because his skin matched that era’s idea of “respectable”. It could also be that Edgar’s colour palette made him seem inferior to Heathcliff, because of how fragile he appeared. Throughout the book, Edgar is displayed as a polished, perfect, porcelain gentleman. And Cathy is as far from that as you can get. She is wild, she is free, and she is hearty. No wonder delicate little Edgar could never understand what she and Heathcliff’s souls were made of. 

Writing what I hope was a scathing review has definitely allowed me to bring my fury down to a simmer, for now at least. Until I’m inevitably reminded that this film exists in a month or so and the cycle repeats. Really, how do you screw up one of the most famous pieces of English literature that badly? Fennell conveniently got rid of at least four characters, by the way, the inclusion of which would have prevented her from stealing the focus from what was absolutely a tale of obsession and demented revenge, and forcing it on a love story that only spanned like a third of the novel. 

Anyway, this was just my opinion. If you disagree with anything I’ve said here, feel free to argue with me if you want.