"Wuthering Heights"

Verdict

A glossy, aggressively stylized adaptation that seems built to provoke as much as to seduce. The response suggests a bold but divisive reimagining: visually memorable, emotionally heightened, and far less faithful to the novel’s feral cruelty than many viewers wanted.

Best for

• viewers who like provocative, high-style literary adaptations
• fans of toxic romance and obsessive love stories
• audiences open to camp, kink, and modernized interpretation
• people who enjoy adaptation discourse as much as the film itself

Skip if

• you want a faithful Brontë adaptation
• you dislike heightened sexualized melodrama
• you prefer restrained period drama
• you’re looking for the novel’s class rage and bleak romantic violence rather than a glossy remix

Overview

This is the kind of adaptation that arrives already carrying a scandal. It seems less interested in reverence than in turning a canonical tragedy into a feverish, contemporary-feeling provocation, with all the glamour, kink, and meme-ready excess that implies. For some viewers, that will feel like a daring reinvention; for others, a fundamental misread of what makes the source so brutal and unforgettable.

Worth noting

The strongest case for it is as an act of pure directorial personality: lush, abrasive, and impossible to ignore. The weakest case is that it may sand off the novel’s most corrosive edges in favor of a more polished, knowingly transgressive romance. That tradeoff makes it fascinating as an object, even when it frustrates as an adaptation.

Bottom line

If you like your period drama with teeth, attitude, and a willingness to be ugly in public, there is probably enough here to justify the ride. If you want emotional devastation rooted in social cruelty and gothic despair, you may come away feeling that the movie mistook intensity for depth.

Top Letterboxd reviews

allain♡ · 98259 likes

emily brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her

timtamtitus (1.5★) · 59156 likes

i’m gonna jump from a wuthering height

Yashley (2★) · 30196 likes

"I don't make love. I wuther heights. Hard."

rachellydiab (2★) · 29036 likes

WHY IS THERE PONY PLAY IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS WHY IS MARGOT ROBBIE DRESSED AS A SCANDINAVIAN MILKMAID WHY IS HEATHCLIFFE A SEXUAL SADIST NOT A VICTIM OF RACISM WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ONNNNNNNNNN

-ˏˋ mak ˊˎ- (1.5★) · 28705 likes

this is what happens when you let people who were born to make aesthetic pinterest boards direct movies

Themes

obsessive love, toxic romance, gothic tragedy, class conflict, revenge, sexual power dynamics, family dysfunction, period drama

Topics

gothic romance, period drama, toxic relationship, obsession, class tension, melodrama, sexual provocation, revenge, literary adaptation, camp