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February 18, 2026
Wuthering Heights adaptation is what happens when no one reads
The latest work from English filmmaker Emerald Fennell — who cultivated a sizable following with her tawdry 2023 dark comedy Saltburn — is a loose adaptation of Emily Bronte’s 1847 Wuthering Heights — loose being a charitable term doing more than its share of heavy lifting — and a reflection of a stark literary crisis plaguing our modern age.
TL;DR
- Emerald Fennell's latest film is a loose adaptation of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights."
- The film is criticized for stripping away the novel's complexity, focusing on impulse and appetite rather than class and moral choice.
- It fails as both a stand-alone film and an interpretation, lacking substance and depth.
- Characters are flattened into "lewd, insipid lovers" with narrative depth comparable to "Fifty Shades of Grey."
- The film's only redeeming quality is its visual splendor, with striking cinematography, costumes, and settings.
- The adaptation is described as "garish fan fiction" that grafts famous images from the novel onto adolescent erotic melodrama.
- Debates about casting choices are considered beside the point compared to the film's fundamental failing in adapting the source material.
- The 2009 PBS series is recommended for a faithful adaptation, and Kate Bush's 1978 record for a looser work inspired by the novel.
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