At the Wuthering Heights premiere night on Tuesday 10 February at PVR Inox, courtesy of Warner Bros, the waiting area outside the screening room had been dressed in red, with roses and installations titled Letters That Never Landed. The notes inside had been written but never sent. It felt like an unspoken explanation of what was to come. This film is preoccupied with what fails to reach its destination, whether that is a letter, a sentence, or a person.
From its opening scene, Emerald Fennell signals that this will not be a careful retelling. Cathy’s father, gentle in the novel, is introduced here as a cruel drunk. He finds Heathcliff abandoned on the street and brings him home, telling young Cathy that the boy will be her pet. The moment is deeply uncomfortable, but it also carries a sharp, grim absurdity—one of several points where the film’s humour surfaces, bleak and occasionally comical rather than playful. It stays with you.
Owen Cooper’s Heathcliff barely speaks, but you can already see how alert he is to danger. Cathy attaches herself to him almost immediately. Their bond forms quickly and without hesitation. When they sneak out together and are caught in a storm, Heathcliff takes the blame for their late return and is lashed. I found that scene hard to sit through. It explains everything that follows.
Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff grows directly out of that childhood. His performance is focused and intense. He watches Cathy constantly, as though he is always waiting for something to be taken away. Margot Robbie’s Catherine meets him with equal force. She is restless, sharp, and often careless with the people who love her. Their connection feels absolute, even when she chooses Edgar Linton.
The film is filled with images that feel carefully composed, often like oil paintings. Some are drained of colour, others heavy with it. One image that stayed with me shows Cathy on the floor after accepting Linton’s proposal, her red skirt spread around her. Later, when she finds her father dead around Christmas, a tree made of empty alcohol bottles glows behind her. Each scene felt arranged without feeling artificial, as though the camera knew exactly where to stop.
Arnold makes bold changes to the story. Cathy’s brother is killed. Nelly becomes Cathy’s illegitimate sister, always kept at a distance and reminded of it. Her bitterness drives the story’s central misunderstanding. She makes sure Heathcliff hears Cathy say, “Marrying Heathcliff would be degrading,” and removes him before she finishes speaking. Watching that moment, it is clear how much damage a single interruption can cause.
The reunion between Cathy and Heathcliff arrives unexpectedly. Earlier in the film, when they are still at Wuthering Heights, Cathy places eggs in Heathcliff’s bed as a joke. Years later, now married and living in Linton’s grand home, Cathy prepares for bed and suddenly sits on eggs. She realises Heathcliff has returned. The moment is unsettling and oddly tender, a reminder that the past has never really left her.
Their confession follows shortly after, in harsher conditions. After her father’s death, Cathy confronts Heathcliff during a storm, standing in the same place where they were caught as children. She tells him he did not hear everything. She tells him she loves him. When Heathcliff replies, “Then let’s be damned,” the line lands with real weight. It does not feel romantic. It feels final.
Their physical relationship is shown briefly and with care. The scenes focus on closeness rather than display, which makes them feel honest rather than indulgent.
Linton’s world is defined by money and taste. He has made his fortune selling velvet, and his house reflects that wealth. The interiors are rich and fashionable, filled with red rooms and textured fabrics. Cathy’s bedroom wallpaper is especially striking, designed as a recreation of her own skin tone, including her moles. Linton calls it the most beautiful colour in the world. The house is impressive and suffocating at the same time – a doll house.
Music is used effectively. Charli XCX appears on the soundtrack in a stripped-back form, far from her pop image. The songs sit easily within the film and never pull attention away from the story.
By the final scene, when Heathcliff holds Cathy’s body and asks her to haunt him, it felt exhausting in the best way.
A retelling can break from the original and still honour it, carrying the same themes at its core and evoking the same feelings in entirely new ways. Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is unapologetically out there—funny in a harsh, sometimes absurd way, brash in its choices, and often graphic in what it asks the viewer to sit with.
Everyone should watch this film. To see how Robbie and Elordi carry this damaged, feral love. To notice the care in every image, the intention behind every rough edge. And to sit with a version of Wuthering Heights that feels painful, deliberate, and deeply felt, one that stays long after the lights come up.
It’s dark and obsessive, gothic and damaged; not a love story, but a story of love torn apart, reclaimed, used, discarded, and haunting long after it’s gone.
Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff
Quiet, feral, and constantly on edge, like he’s waiting to be hurt. His Heathcliff isn’t romantic, he’s damaged, watchful and devastating to sit with.
It’s a brutal reworking, not a polite adaptation
Emerald Fennell strips the story down to its bones. It’s physical, cruel, and emotionally direct, full of moments that feel hard to watch but impossible to forget.
The visuals do half the storytelling
Red skirts on the floor, storms on the moors, rooms heavy with colour and texture. Every frame feels deliberate without ever feeling staged.
This is love at its most destructive
Obsessive, unfinished, and corrosive. Not a love story, but a portrait of love that consumes, damages, and refuses to let go.
It lingers long after it ends
Missed words, bad timing, and ghosts that won’t stay buried. The kind of film that follows you out of the cinema.
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