The 2026 version of Wuthering Heights is a truly miserable experience that does little to evoke what readers love about the book. Photo: Warner Bros.
Emily Brontë’s book Wuthering Heights is one of the most adapted pieces of fiction ever.
In fact, since 1939, there have been at least 40 TV and film adaptations of the doomed romance between Catherine and Heathcliff worldwide.
Now, a mere 179 years after Brontë’s tale was first published, director Emerald Fennell of Saltburn fame has released yet another film depicting the iconic book.
This time, it stars the two most famous Australian actors in the world right now, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.
Just like 95 per cent of the other adaptations, Wuthering Heights (2026) centres on Catherine and her essentially adopted brother, Heathcliff.
Catherine has grown up with mild wealth stemming from her drunk father, Earnshaw, who owns the dank and dreary estate that the narrative is named after, Wuthering Heights.
Heathcliff, a young beggar, is brought in by Earnshaw to befriend Catherine, and the pair become inseparable.
Despite their underlying feelings for each other, the difference in class between the two means they can never be together.
Instead, Catherine weds the wealthy Edgar Linton, and Heathcliff runs away, before finding wealth and returning several years later.
With the two now on similar standings, Catherine and Heathcliff undertake a toxic affair.
Much like many others who have read the book, Funnell first read Wuthering Heights when she was in high school.
Unlike every other adaptation, she decided it wasn’t necessary to reread the book and instead based it purely on what she recalls from reading it as a teenager.
Here lies the issue within the 2026 adaptation: it’s awful.
From the opening seconds of the film, which depict a blackened screen backed with the sounds of groaning, viewers are led to expect the adaptation to be sexually fuelled.
But much like the film’s opening, which reveals the source of the moaning, it’s clear that this isn’t the adaptation your grandmother grew up with.
Instead, it’s an ugly, gothic, sexually depraved display that wastes some of the best talent in Hollywood.
Now, the original isn’t necessarily a love story, serving as more of a cautionary tale; these themes are completely missing throughout.
That’s not to say this film should have been a copy-and-paste of what’s come before; it is from the director of Saltburn, after all, but that doesn’t excuse the genuinely bad film that takes its place.
The film never chooses a route. In parts, it presents itself as a gothic sexual fantasy, but then limits itself from exploring themes of sexual depravity.
It attempts to have conversations about lust and class divide, but instead paints every character as a villain. It gives the audience no-one to cheer for, and instead, the entire thing becomes so boring.
By the third act, when Funnell decides to channel her inner Tim Burton and deliver on some of these themes, it all feels genuinely disgusting and borderline abusive to watch.
It doesn’t help the film’s cause that both Robbie and Elordi are miscast.
The pair is genuinely unlikable and lacks any chemistry, even before their affair. You are more likely to find intimacy by filming a toddler smashing Barbie and Ken dolls together than by watching any scene these two share.
Robbie puts in the worst performance of her career by turning Catherine into a bratty, unbearable hypocrite; meanwhile, Elordi’s script must have only said, ”Stare maniacally”.
The film also struggles with its presentation. So much of it feels like a scene from Alice in Wonderland, but without the charm. It’s drab and gross.
Even the scenes in Edgar Linton’s mansion, which is supposed to be a grander-than-life location, have this unsettling sheen to them that feels unnatural. It’s like the entire film was shot on a stage, but instead of sets, the film chooses to have a nasty greenscreen backdrop.
Funnell committed a terrible practical joke by releasing this film on the weekend of Valentine’s Day. Every couple expecting an intimate, romantic depiction of a famous novel will instead be subjected to a cruel and unusual parody.
The film is a miserable experience and is the first truly horrible movie of 2026.
Wuthering Heights is showing in cinemas around the country.
