Wuthering Heights... Or Barbie Does Bronte

February 2026

 

Wuthering Heights should really be called Withering Heights...

 

Because this film is so awful...

 

It may just wither the careers of its stars...

Jacob Elordi, Margot Robbie...

 

Along with poor Owen Cooper...

Who was just getting started after giving an Oscar-worthy performance in Adolescence ...

 

Because this movie is cringe on soo many levels...

 

That half-way through it...

 

I started to feel bad for everyone in it...

 

First off...

 

Margo Robbie as a blond Cathy...

Turns Wuthering Heights into Barbie does Bronte...

 

Because Robbie vacillates between Mean Girl and Seductive Charmer ...

But with a sunny Aussie girl vibe...

That seems completely out of place on a Yorkshire moor...
 

Or in a tragic love story...

 

Plus, she is too old to play Cathy...

 

And Jacob Elordi...

 

Who we know from Euphoria...

Is capable of playing a very complicated character...

And can do dark and brooding well...

 

And Heathcliff is a gold mine of a part....

Given the right screenplay...

 

But in this version of Wuthering Heights...

Elordi vacillates between love-sick puppy, vengeful lover, and evil sadist...

But he cycles back and forth... and back and forth...

So it looks like Emerald Fennel has never heard ...

Of that useful plot device...

 

Called a character arc...

 

And Elordi and Robbie go in and out of accents constantly in this film...

With neither sounding like anyone from the North of England...

 

And more like a couple who just flew in from LA...

 

So was there not enough money to hire a dialogue coach?

 

And since when did the Earnshaws live in what looked like a quarry?

 

And the Yorkshire moors have rock croppings that resemble papier-mache rocks...

That looked like they were the product of a 2nd-grade art project....

 

Now it did appear Fennel was going for a definite Tim Burton look...

For her Gothic romance...

 

But with occasional dollops of color...

Sprinkled with lots of grotesque...

 

As perhaps a homage to Guillermo del Toro?

 

Except Fennel seemed to be framing some shots just to capture a visual that caught her attention...

Such as the scene with the blood red velvet walls shot in contrast to a bright white staircase...

 

But unlike del Toro...this image, although striking, served no narrative purpose...

It seemed to be there...

 

Just cause...

 

Which could be said about way too many scenes in this movie...

 

So there were the curtains that seemed to be made of cling wrap...

 

And a dress that looked like someone crumpled together some cellophane and tied it with a bow...

 

Because Robbie looks great in anything?

 

And there were some frocks with fabric that had so much sheen...

Cathy looked like she just stepped off the stage in Vegas...

 

While others looked like they came from the Christian Lacroix “I Just Discovered Ribbons Collection”...

 

And it would not be an exaggeration to say...

 

That none of these confections would have ever been worn by a wealthy woman in early 19th- century England ...

 

But then again...

 

Edgar would not have been Pakistani...

Nor Nell Chinese...

 

And Robbie’s ever-changing hairstyles...

 

And there did seem to be a new one every five minutes...

 

Along with the interiors of the grand country house...

Where every room was a different color and style...

But all decked out in a manner that can be best described as “Late Versailles”

 

Were so over the top...

 

That along with that death scene...

 

Where the leeches on Cathy’s face crawl up the wall behind her bed...

With bright red blood pouring out of her body and off the bed like a waterfall of death...

 

Which... BTW... was very Frida Kahloesque...

 

Made me start to wonder if this film was intended to be camp...

 

And the quality of the acting... along with the screenplay...

Did little to disabuse me of that notion...

 

But then... there was the sex...

And there was a lot of it...

 

With almost a third of the film devoted to Elordi and Robbie going at it...

 

Which is probably why Suzie Weiss’s comment...

That this film has a lot of “emotional thrust”...

 

Was so on target...

 

Except Robbie and Elordi have zero chemistry...

And looked so bored ...

You would have thought they were reading the tax code.....

Rather than being deep in the throes of a long denied white-hot passion...

 

And Emerald Fennell has a bad habit ...

Of including scenes in her films...

That make you want to look away...

 

Which is why I’ll never be able to forget Barry Keoghan licking that bathtub in Saltburn...

 

But at least no one humped a grave in this Fennel film...

 

But she does take a deep dive into the salacious multiple times in Wuthering Heights...

And in ways that seem to say...

 

I’m going to do this because I can...

 

Which made the grotesque feel gratuitous...

 

And I am talking about that opening execution scene...

That just seemed to be there to get everyone talking about this film...

 

And yes...that mission was accomplished...

 

But it had little connection to the rest of the movie...

 

So I would describe Fennel as a director who is a bit too high on her own supply...

Especially when it comes to what she does visually...

 

But in Wuthering Heights...

 

This ended up being a distraction...

From a story that had lots of potential...

 

And from which Fennel never completely detached...

 

And that’s important...

 

Because...

 

Since she couldn’t manage to fully commit to being camp in this movie....

 

Wuthering Heights ends up a chimera...

Of camp mixed with lovelorn tragedy...

 

So that by the end of the film...

You don’t know whether to laugh or cry...

 

But you do know...

 

That if you were any of the actors in this movie..

You’d be hoping no one sees it...

 

Because the SNL skits write themselves...

 

​​

​​

​​

​

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

​

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

​​

 

​

​

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​​

​

​

 

​

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

 

​

​​

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​​

 

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​

 

​

 

​

​

​

 

​

 

 

 

 

​

 

​

 

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​​