"Wuthering Heights" 

“WUTHERING HEIGHTS” 🥀 (2026)

“Peace with you is worse than war.”

That philosophy fuels a story that confuses love with destruction and somehow makes it look seductive.

“WUTHERING HEIGHTS” is an adaptation, or what I consider a fan fiction–erotic fantasy reimagining, of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights.

The film stars Academy Award–nominated Margot Robbie as the impulsive, frustratingly naive Catherine Earnshaw, opposite Jacob Elordi as the brooding, yearning Heathcliff. Adopted as Catherine’s “pet,” Heathcliff’s childhood devotion festers into a volatile star-crossed loves tale shaped by class and circumstance. They are products of their time, and the film leans into that fate.

This movie is for the girls who want to be obsessed over, and the lover boys who are willing to risk it all.

Director Emerald Fennell, best known for Saltburn (2023), once again proves she has a gift for crafting suffocating sexual tension and ferally messy relationships. This project is no exception. In fact, “WUTHERING HEIGHTS” feels like full-blown smut fiction brought to life. Whether it honors the source material feels beside the point. I haven’t read the novel, but I believe creators have every right to reinterpret stories through their own stylistic lens. And if you’re familiar with Fennell’s work, this hyper-sensual, morally murky direction is entirely on brand.

Still, the film truly belongs to Jacob Elordi, who had the women in my screening growling, howling, and damn near (hilariously) barking at the screen whenever he showed up. Elordi delivers a tormented, commanding performance. He fully embodies Heathcliff’s obsessive longing and wounded pride, dominating the screen and casting a large shadow over the entire production. Every glance, every clenched jaw, every restrained confession feels combustible.

Margot Robbie, on the other hand, while undeniably magnetic and objectively stunning, feels slightly miscast. Her performance never quite reaches the same feral intensity Elordi brings, and at times her aesthetic feels at odds with the otherwise immersive period design. That said, Catherine is not an easy character to make likable, she is manipulative, selfish, and emotionally reckless, which makes connecting to her an uphill battle from the start.

The dynamic between them often feels less like tragic romance and more like a destructive cycle she initiates and he cannot escape. Yet that toxicity is clearly the point.

The target audience, lovers of dark, erotic romance will eat this up. It’s the classic “come undone for me” fantasy. The unsaid words, the constant push-pull, the sense that peace would feel worse than war. Their connection thrives on denial because saying the truth aloud would mean losing everything.

That tension is the film’s greatest strength. Their relationship plays out like extended foreplay, doubled down with heavy symbolism and overt innuendo. Where many films strain to manufacture erotic imagery, this one lets the debauchery breathe. It doesn’t blush; it prowls.
Structurally, the film mirrors its escalating obsession. The first quarter is childish flirtation, the second is simmering, almost unbearable foreplay, and the third is relentless, all-consuming fixation.

For the right audience, this will be a cursed love that is all-consuming. For me, it was a morally confused take on a love that is hard to root for, regardless of how entrancing the passionate moments of intimacy can be.

It’s hard to deny that this film, from the immaculate set and costume design that capture the bleak reality of this time period to the wickedly palpable sexual tension, has an aura about it that is well targeted, but being unable to root for these two misguided souls halts any semblance of care for what eventually happens.

It’s a good-guy-meets-the-wrong-girl tale that gets swept up in trying to be more than that. I may respect the attempt; it’s just hard not to leave the theatre thinking Heathcliff deserved better. 

Enjoy!

6.9/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 2hrs12mins

Where: Now Playing In Theatres

The Richmond Reviewer Wuthering Heights Review - February 18th, 2026.

#WutheringHeights #JacobElordi  #Movie  #Review #MargotRobbie #Romance #Cinema