“Wuthering Heights” Finds Foggy Beauty in Rich Excess – front mezz junkies, Theater News

The Frontmezzjunkes Film Review: Wuthering Heights

By Ross

It begins with sound. Rhythmic gasps and strained movement drift through the darkness, suggesting passion before the image reveals something far more unsettling. Desire and death collapse into one another in a single sensory misdirection, immediately announcing the film’s intentions: to seduce first, clarify later.

If you are ready and willing to meet this new “Wuthering Heights” on its own terms, the film, directed by Emerald Fennell (“Saltburn“), reveals itself as a clever, bold act of rampant reinvention rather than reverence. This is most definitely not an adaptation interested in preserving the stillness or psychological inwardness of Emily Brontë’s epic novel. Instead, it rides forward through the fog, headfirst into sensation, asking audiences to surrender to its heart-pounding spectacle and heightened romantic delirium. Accepting that premise is essential. Those seeking fidelity to the book may find these moors unfamiliar and even distasteful territory, but viewers open to a more wild-eyed interpretation may discover a lush and intoxicating cinematic experience.

Visually, the film is beyond breathtaking. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren (“Jay Kelly“) expertly fills each frame with saturated emotional colour, rolling fog, and rain-soaked landscapes that feel almost mystical in scale. Deep reds, shadowed interiors, and bursts of luxurious overabundance create an atmosphere of feverish romanticism that pushes every emotion toward operatic intensity. The production design, the film’s strongest wild card, embraces excess with conviction, transforming the landscape into an emotional canvas. At times, the imagery feels deliberately overwhelming, a sensory storm that mirrors the characters’ obsession even when the emotional foundation beneath it struggles to sustain that intensity.

The performances commit fully to that heightened world. Jacob Elordi (“Frankenstein“) and Margot Robbie (“Barbie“) bring striking physical beauty to their igniting screen presence. Their chemistry is built on smouldering glances and physical magnetism that the camera eagerly celebrates. Yet the central romance often rests on surface longing rather than emotional intimacy, leaving desire vivid but emotional connection elusive.

The controversial casting of Elordi inevitably reshapes Heathcliff’s outsider identity, softening the novel’s themes of racial and social alienation that once defined the character’s anguish. From the outset, he is too handsome and magnetic to be seen as someone who might have to struggle against society to gain acceptance, especially once he has amassed an unexplained fortune. He is the epitome of that bare-chested pulp fiction hero, making the women swoon and the men step aside.

Supporting performances provide the much-needed texture to fully lean into the melodrama. Shazad Latif (“Atomic“) delivers an Edgar that is genuinely easy to pity, although we do begin to wonder how blind and deaf he is for the majority of the film. Hong Chau (“The Whale“) lends Nelly Dean a contemptuous wit and will that cuts through the contrived excess and emotionality. In contrast, Alison Oliver (The Order) delivers a startlingly specific turn as Isabella, embracing the film’s heightened tone with fearless individuality.

Throughout the film, characters frequently describe one another as dolls, possessions, or cherished pets, language that once carried sharp implications about class, race, and social power within Brontë’s novel. Here, those ideas linger without sustained exploration, and the result can feel strangely unsettling rather than illuminating. The adaptation seems uninterested in wrestling with those heavier meanings, choosing instead to channel its energy toward heightened romantic fantasy. Relationships are reframed through a modern lens, including a provocative reinterpretation of Heathcliff and Isabella’s dynamic that risks blurring emotional cruelty into stylized eroticism. Synth-pop interludes from Charli XCX push the story further into an altered emotional reality, evoking the glossy intensity of romantic escapism rather than literary tragedy. The film makes its priorities clear. This Wuthering Heights is built for sensation, longing, and spectacle, inviting audiences to be swept up in desire rather than to interrogate it.

By the final act, the visual splendour remains undeniably the production’s defining achievement, even as the emotional impact feels curiously distant. One leaves impressed by the craft, the commitment, and the fearless aesthetic ambition, yet not fully heartbroken by the fate of its lovers. Emerald Fennell delivers a lavish and audacious reinvention that understands how to overwhelm the senses, even if it never quite pierces the heart. The storm dazzles as it rages, but when the fog lifts, it is spectacle, not sorrow, that lingers.