"WUTHERING HEIGHTS" (2026)

Genre: Drama/Romance
Director: Emerald Fennell
Cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Alison Oliver, Shazad Latif, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell, Amy Morgan, Jessica Knappett
Runtime: 2 hr 16 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes)
Released By: Warner Bros
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 12 February 2026

Synopsis: From Warner Bros. Pictures and Academy Award and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Emerald Fennell comes “WUTHERING HEIGHTS,” starring Academy Award and BAFTA nominee Margot Robbie opposite BAFTA nominee Jacob Elordi. A bold and original imagining of one of the greatest love stories of all time, Emerald Fennell’s “WUTHERING HEIGHTS” stars Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, whose forbidden passion for one another turns from romantic to intoxicating in an epic tale of lust, love and madness.

Movie Review:

Emerald Fennell’s "Wuthering Heights" (note how the title is stylised with quotation marksarrives with the weight of literary legacy and the expectation of provocation. Full disclosure: this reviewer has not read Emily Brontë’s original novel, and only later discovered that a substantial portion of the source material has been omitted for this adaptation. Yet that narrowing of scope may not be a flaw. By centring the film almost entirely on Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, Fennell distils the story into something feverish and intimate — less a sprawling gothic chronicle and more a volatile portrait of obsessive love.

Literary purists will undoubtedly have complaints about what has been trimmed, reshaped, or reinterpreted. Fennell, however, has never been a filmmaker interested in reverence for its own sake. As with Promising Young Woman (2020) and Saltburn (2023), her third feature is bold, stylised, and unapologetically sensual. Here, she transforms a classic text into a cinematic experience that sizzles, driven largely by the magnetic pairing of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

Robbie’s Catherine is headstrong, impulsive, and emotionally ravenous. She is not designed to be easily liked, and that is precisely what makes the performance compelling. Robbie leans into Catherine’s contradictions — her vulnerability and vanity, her longing and cruelty — creating a woman who feels dangerously alive. She is entirely believable as someone who would burn down her own world in the name of love, regardless of the cost.

Elordi’s Heathcliff matches her intensity with smouldering restraint. The character’s brooding bitterness and wounded pride could easily tip into caricature, but Elordi’s natural charisma keeps him watchable even at his most morally dubious. With a face that seems engineered for longing glances and quiet menace, he exudes charm even when Heathcliff behaves abominably. Together, Robbie and Elordi anchor the film, ensuring that despite their characters’ indulgence in toxicity and less-than-noble impulses, the audience remains captivated.

Visually, the film is intoxicating. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren crafts images that are lush, windswept, and almost tactile in their beauty. The moors are not merely a backdrop but a living presence. Interiors glow with candlelight and shadow, amplifying the sense of intimacy and doom. Every frame feels deliberate, painterly, and sensuous.

Fennell’s storytelling is sly and subversive. The film opens with what appears to be a sex scene, only to reveal something far darker: a body on the brink of hanging. Throughout, she employs close-up shots of objects that initially seem suggestive, only to reframe them into unexpectedly beautiful compositions. These visual feints mirror the narrative itself — love that masquerades as passion but carries the seeds of destruction.

If "Wuthering Heights" romanticises anything, it is not love as a noble ideal but love as an all-consuming force. This is not a tale of virtuous devotion; it is a portrait of desire that corrodes as much as it exalts. And yet, despite the toxicity that defines its central relationship, the film sweeps you away. Fennell proves once again that she can make morally murky territory feel alluring, crafting a gothic fever dream that is as seductive as it is unsettling.

Movie Rating:

(Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi ignite the screen in a sensual, toxic love story that’s impossible to look away from)

Review by John Li