Emerald Fennell’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS Is Bleak, Beautiful, and Devastating

I would have to say that Gothic romance is not my forte. In fact, I’m fairly certain this is the first time I’ve reviewed a film in the genre. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has been adapted for film and television more than twenty times: an astonishing number of reinterpretations for one story. Emerald Fennell’s version was my first experience with it.

So, in addition to watching the film, I brought along my personal expert: my wife, Caroline. She holds a PhD in Literature and knows the Brontës well. Between the two of us, I’m hoping this review offers something thoughtful and layered.

The story centers on Cathy and Heathcliff. Cathy grows up on the Yorkshire moors at Wuthering Heights. Her father, portrayed here as tyrannical and self-absorbed (a departure from Brontë’s characterization, I believe) brings home a mysterious boy one evening and installs him in the household.

Cathy names him Heathcliff. The two grow up together in isolation, forming a bond that is passionate, volatile, and ultimately destructive. Cathy is entitled and fiercely independent, yet she genuinely loves Heathcliff. Heathcliff, in turn, worships her.

The film is dark, emotionally and visually. It explores multiple layers of social dominance, class cruelty, and gender inequality. Emerald Fennell handles these themes with precision and confidence. She understands that the true horror of this story is not supernatural; it is societal.

Margot Robbie delivers a powerful performance as Cathy. She captures Cathy’s conflicted nature: her resentment toward her father, her deep connection to Heathcliff, her ambition to elevate her social standing, and her casual disdain for those she perceives as beneath her. Robbie makes Cathy magnetic even at her most frustrating.

Jacob Elordi is equally compelling as Heathcliff. He conveys Heathcliff’s obsessive devotion and simmering rage with restraint. His performance avoids melodrama and nstead builds tension through quiet intensity.

Among the supporting cast, Hong Chau’s portrayal of Nelly is particularly striking. Fennell reimagines Nelly as something far more complicated than a passive observer. Chau plays her with a subtle bitterness that suggests years of invisibility and highlights her displacement by Heathcliff as Cathy’s dearest confidante. Nelly becomes the oily hinge upon which the tragedy turns: not the villain exactly, but the quiet enabler of destruction. It is one of the film’s boldest interpretive choices.

Shazad Latif’s Edgar Linton feels comparatively underwritten, though that may be intentional. His bland decency contrasts sharply with the emotional ferocity of Cathy, and Heathcliff’s ruthlessness and emerging cruelty. Notably, Mr. Linton dampens Cathy’s intensity, rendering her, as Mrs. Linton, a false and superficial version of herself.

Alison Oliver’s Isabella, however, nearly steals every scene she’s in. Her nervous energy and social awkwardness give the character a fragility that makes her arc quietly devastating. The first scene in which Cathy and the viewer encounter the Lintons offers a delightful encapsulation of Isabella’s impetuous, eager character. She enthusiastically recounts to Edgar the plot of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, appalled by the play’s tragic outcome, which, she believes, could have been prevented with better communication. This scene, light as it is, foreshadows the film’s ending, a masterful inclusion by Fennell.

Yet my favorite “characters” in the film are the two estates: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Wuthering Heights is practically alive. It is rotting, damp, wind-beaten, and sinking into the moors. The fog, mud, and grime seem permanent. The house feels like a physical manifestation of the emotional decay within it. Fennell appears to have used real exterior locations, which enhances the authenticity. The estate is not just a setting, it is a wound that drives Cathy to sacrifice her own happiness and Heathcliff’s, to escape but not heal it.

Thrushcross Grange is its deliberate opposite. Bright, polished, almost artificial. The interiors feel constructed intentionally so. The brightness borders on theatrical, and that artificiality reinforces the emotional falseness beneath the surface. The characters who inhabit the Grange project civility, but their politeness masks ambition, jealousy, and repression.

The set design itself becomes commentary, as does the costuming. Cathy’s elaborate, shimmering, almost-neon gowns serve as visual reminders of both her “success” and her artifice. She has married Linton to save herself from her family’s poverty and degradation but has lost herself in the process.

Despite the bleakness of the Yorkshire moors, Fennell finds beauty in the stark landscape. The wind-swept hills and open sky offer moments of haunting serenity. The harshness of the terrain mirrors the emotional barrenness of the characters, yet there is something undeniably beautiful in its severity.

Fennell’s greatest achievement is showing that entitlement and wealth cannot manufacture happiness. Cathy and Heathcliff’s romance is painful to watch not because it lacks passion, but because it contains too much of it. Their tragedy feels almost. Shakespearean in scope: love corrupted by pride, ego, and social ambition.

I am grateful I saw this in a theater. When the film ended, there were audible sobs in the audience. I cannot think of a better testament to its emotional impact. Emerald Fennell has crafted a near-operatic tragedy: bleak, beautiful, and devastating.