“Wuthering Heights” premiered on Feb. 13 and was directed by Emerald Fennell. The movie is a feverish, stylized reimagining of the classic Emily Brontë novel. Known for her provocative works in “Promising Young Woman” and “Salt Burn,” Fennel approaches Brontë’s classic not as a sacred text but as raw material. The result is a film that is visually arresting and emotionally punishing, but not without controversy.
The most glaring issue with the film is the casting of Heathcliff. Traditionally portrayed as racially ambiguous and explicitly described as dark-skinned, Heathcliff’s outsider status is central to the story’s tension around class and otherness. Fennel’s casting choice dilutes the racial and social marginalization that fuels Heathcliff’s alienation and build-up to vengeance. This adaptation severely risks reframing his rage as purely romantic obsession rather than the byproduct of systematic racism, cruelty, and prejudice. I can see the intention of Fennell’s idea of universalizing Heathcliff’s animosity as a threat all men are capable of, but still, the casting choice comes off as either tone-deaf to the struggles of people of color or blatant whitewashing.
Fennell’s adaptation also diverges sharply from the novel’s intricate narrative structure, a broad, layered storytelling filter through the perspectives of Lockwood and Nelly, that creates emotional distance through ambiguity, allowing readers to question the narrators’ reliability. Fennell discards much of this framing device, opting for a more immediate, biased, linear narrative. The removal of these mediating voices streamlines the plot but sacrifices the novel’s haunting sense of generational storytelling. This results in the movie lacking the book’s second arc. By the end of the movie, Fennell’s framing of Nelly’s actions shifts the entire plot, making her an antagonistic character.
Another major change in this adaptation is the total absence of any supernatural gothic elements from the original novel, the removal of ghosts, and the omission of the second half of the book, which further removes yet another layer of Brontë’s deep multigenerational storytelling.
Yet for all its omissions, Wuthering Heights is undeniably cohesive and thematically focused. She strips the story to its most volatile core, emphasizing the destructive intensity between Catherine and Heathcliff. Tenderness curdles into manipulation. Love becomes indistinguishable from mental domination. By narrowing its lens, the film transforms a sprawling Gothic saga into a claustrophobic character study.
In the end, Fennell’s adaptation may frustrate novel puritans, but it succeeds as an amateur-driven interpretation. It is less concerned with fidelity than with feeling, specifically the ugliness of attachment, shades of feeling, and longing. This Wuthering Heights plunges headfirst into obsession, revenge, depravity, and cruelty, and appears not as a faithful retelling but as a bold, unsettling excavation of love at its most corrosive state.
Now, from my personal experience watching movies in theaters, I would have to say that, from the beginning to the middle of the movie, you begin to be drawn into phenomenal storytelling and develop a vested interest in one or the other characters. But by the end of the movie, despite the tragic ending, I don’t feel compelled to cry or feel sorry for any of the characters in the film. Mainly due to the amount of cruelty you see, every single character in this movie undertakes, and by the end, you feel a bleak, sterile ending.