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.
13% ★☆☆☆☆ (1,473,672)
"Wuthering Heights"
Where to watch: Max
Movie · Romance · Drama · R
2026 · 2h 16m · ★ 13% (1M)
Come undone.
Director: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau
Overview
Tragedy strikes when Heathcliff falls in love with Catherine Earnshaw, a woman from a wealthy family in 18th-century England.
Director
Emerald Fennell
Production
MRC, LuckyChap Entertainment, Lie Still, Warner Bros. Pictures, Domain Entertainment
Cast
Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Alison Oliver, Shazad Latif, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell, Amy Morgan, Jessica Knappett, Charlotte Mellington, Owen Cooper, Vy Nguyen, Millie Kent, Vicki Pepperdine, Paul Rhys, Robert Cawsey, Gabriel Bisset-Smith, Louie Benjamin Potts, Treyston Braine, Jaydon Eastman
Where to watch
Max
Curator Review
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