Wuthering Heights in these modern times.
- Ben Sorensen
- 13 hours ago
- 4 min read
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think Wuthering Heights is the greatest gothic romance ever written, and those who think it’s a 19th-century instruction manual for emotionally avoidant chaos. Emerald Fennell’s new film politely refuses to referee that argument by tossing you onto the moors, handing you a candle, and wishing you “good luck” with your feelings and triggers.
This is, unmistakably, a remake-adaptation of a novel that’s been adapted so often it practically has its own frequent-flyer card. Fennell even leans into that “version” idea in the marketing and framing, and the result is exactly as you suspected: polarising. If you like your classics reverent and museum-glass pristine, you may feel personally attacked. If you like your classics reanimated with a pulse, spicy bruises, and a sly smile, you’ll probably be grinning through the discomfort.
The headline here is tone. Fennell makes the story feel less respectable classic and more like a lived-in emotional weather system complete with violent gusts, sudden stillness, then another gale. It’s a period romance, sure, but not the soft-focus kind and the Vaseline isn’t on the lense! This film doesn’t just romanticise toxicity but displays it on a rotating platter under harsh light and asks you to notice what you’re applauding. Whether it’s too harsh or not harsh enough will depend on your tolerance for moral ambiguity in corsets.
The casting is built for modern mythmaking: Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, with a supporting ensemble that gives the household dynamics real weight (Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, among others). Robbie’s Catherine is ferociously watchable, smart, reckless, emotionally fluent in the worst possible way. While Elordi leans into the character’s gravitational pull: the kind that drags everyone nearby into the same storm, whether they asked for it or not. Their chemistry doesn’t feel designed to make you swoon; it feels designed to make you understand why people ruin their own lives with such commitment.
Technically, it’s luscious in a deliberately severe way: beauty with teeth. Linus Sandgren’s cinematography gives the landscape a mood you can practically inhale, and the film’s overall aesthetic has that high-end, grimly romantic sheen that Fennell does so well, where every candlelit room looks like it’s hiding a secret and every silence is its own pensive argument. It’s the sort of craft that makes you appreciate how much money can be spent recreating misery attractively.
And yes: some viewers are going to leave the cinema and immediately do a bit of… research. Not because the film is trying to be scandalous in a cheap way, but because Wuthering Heights has always been the kind of story that makes people ask, “Wait—was that normal back then?” and “Why am I going for anyone here?” Fennell’s version, by amplifying the story’s feral intensity, nudges that curiosity into overdrive. The best advice remains the simplest: you don’t need homework to watch this, but if you’re even slightly tempted, read the book. Emily Brontë’s novel is still a minor miracle of atmosphere, cruelty, and psychological precision.
What I enjoyed most is that the film treats the story less like a romance and more like a study in emotional economics: who gets power, who gets grace, who gets forgiven, who gets branded “difficult,” and what society calls “love” when it’s wearing a nice outfit. Underneath the gothic theatrics, it’s surprisingly contemporary about class, possession, entitlement, and the ways people confuse desire with destiny.
It’s also a reminder that “period drama” doesn’t mean “polite.”
And then there’s the Kate Bush factor; an entirely valid, culturally necessary side quest. By dragging Wuthering Heights back into the mainstream conversation, the film also reopens the door to contextually appreciating Bush’s 1978 song as the unhinged stroke of brilliance it is: a pop banger that commits to the bit so hard it becomes immortal. Even if you don’t love this remake, it has the decency to send people back to the source material and, ideally, back to that song with fresh ears.
Back to this film: Intensity becomes the currency. The characters don’t just want love; they want proof-of-life via emotional extremity. Calm isn’t safety, it’s boredom.
Pain doubles as identity. When you don’t have a language for attachment, regulation, boundaries, or “I’m spiralling,” you cling to the only thing that feels solid: the storm.
Compulsion masquerades as romance. Modern viewers clock the loop: trigger → spike → crash → repeat. That’s not “soulmates,” that’s an unmedicated nervous system doing parkour.
There is a sobering weirdness in the viewing experience: pre-modern psychology seen through post-modern psychology eyes. We’re watching people who don’t have therapy language, mental health models, social permission to self-reflect in that way, or often the material stability to even consider emotional hygiene.
So instead of “I’m dysregulated and recreating a familiar wound,” you get “I will ruin my life on the moors, poetically.”
The remake angle makes that clash sharper because contemporary filmmaking grammar of performance nuance, intimacy framing, and the camera’s moral proximity invites us to diagnose what older adaptations sometimes presented as grand, tragic romance. A 2026 lens tends to translate “passion” into pattern.
“A gothic litmus test: do you want love, or do you want the rush?”
The film’s real audacity is what happens after the revelation. When we have had the realisation of the undeniable toxicity, looked in the mirror at ourselves, then still knowingly and consentingly put the dog collar on with a wink craving the rush and freedom in our odd truth breaking societal emotive captivity.
So: is it “better” than earlier versions? That’s the wrong question. The real question is whether you want a Wuthering Heights that behaves itself. This one doesn’t. It’s stylish, intense, and occasionally confrontational. Less a cosy classic and more a beautifully made argument about obsession, status, and self-destruction.
If you love it, you’ll love it loudly. If you hate it, you’ll hate it poetically. Either way, the moors win.
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