Wuthering Heights
In theaters, Opened February 13, 2026
Withering Heights
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In theaters, Opened February 13, 2026
Book Lovers Beware: This is not Wuthering Heights. This is an Emerald Fennell movie.
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights has shot to the number 1 bestseller of the week at McNally Jackson SoHo, now the Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition boasting a comic gothic cover akin to a drawing of Wednesday Adams in Netflix, and the back boasting a drawing of Heathcliff more like Robert Pattinson in Twilight. Emerald Fennell’s version has cast Euphoria’s (and more recent and perchance apt Frankenstein’s) Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie (the titular Barbie and Harley Quinn) as an earnest, buxom Catherine Earnshaw.
With the internet maelstrom trending, I purchase the book but decide a re-read will have to wait. In my expediency, I open the cover and settle for perusing the opening line: “1801- This is certainly a beautiful country!” Ah, I remember: the unreliable narrator! I reserve movie tickets post-haste.
Trigger Warning: You’re not going to see an adaptation of a book. You’re going to see a movie inspired by a book from 1847 packaged for the non-literary Gen Z. The amount you appreciate the source materials is directly proportionate to how you feel about the movie. If you go to an Emerald Fennell movie and expect anything other than that, it’s like going to Scream and not expecting a horror movie. Kind of like Clueless is based on Emma. They should have called it something else, like The House. Fittingly, House is the title track of Charli XCX’s accompanying concept album. You can get a double-dose of Charli right now at Nitehawk Movie Theater, in her self-starring mock-umentary, The Moment, and then head for the soppy sound bath that is her Wuthering Heights musical accompaniment.
And now for the feature presentation. I was never partial to Heathcliff. Here, Elordi is a handsome Fabio on a black steed riding into the blood-red sunset. Amongst his other pursuits:
He can start a fire!
He can hoist her into a tree!
He lifts bales of hay!
He slaughters pigs!
All with muscles bulging and glistening in heady sweat!!
Similarly, Margot Robbie as Catherine is sincere, whereas I always found the book’s character ridiculous and unbelievable:
“You must like to see me cry.”
“Not as much as you like the act of crying.”
Isabella, the moneyed and naive rival, is a Promising Young Woman. Here, Emerald turns consent on its head, leaving us barking for more.
This tale is more about class than consent:
“What’s wrong, Catherine? Is the necklace too big? Is the dog too small?”
Pink marble walls with purple veins and pools of blood. And who can forget Margot Robbie’s now-trending hair with twin corset braids styled like horns, more devilishly elaborate as the affair scenes progress.
I was never partial to the book— always a Jane Eyre type at heart, having read it cover to cover at least 5 times and even studying it in college. Wuthering Heights is more High School fare, and I remember rolling my eyes at the clearly lesser sister’s stupid book about stupid people. “I could die of boredom.” To quote Cathy.
In the theater, the cacophony of laughter from the female movie audience at every lascivious look from Elordi to his female compatriots leads us into camp territory—cinematic masterpiece aside:
Masturbation on the moors.
Sex on the hardwood floors.
Climax in the carriage.
Cunnilingus in the Emerald forest.
I don’t remember this in the book.
I ask Emerald:
“Are you pleased with yourself?”
“Yes. Very.”
Defenseless, I agree.
