Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights is not a reverent recreation of Victorian tragedy - it is a deliberately provocative reworking that prioritizes psychological intensity and carnal darkness over period-drama convention. Starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, the film has arrived in the cultural conversation with both genuine praise and pointed criticism. It is, by most accounts, exactly the kind of film Fennell intended: one that unsettles as much as it captivates.
What Fennell's Vision Actually Does to Brontë's Novel
Brontë's 1847 novel has always resisted easy adaptation. Its structure is deliberately fragmented - told through nested narrators, separated by years, filtered through unreliable memory. Its central love story is not romantic in any conventional sense; it is obsessive, destructive, and morally ambiguous to its core. Heathcliff is not a brooding hero. He is a figure of social exclusion and retaliatory cruelty. Catherine is not simply a tragic heroine. She is selfish, volatile, and divided against herself. Most adaptations soften these edges. Fennell has chosen to sharpen them.
The director has been candid about her approach, telling The Hollywood Reporter that she could not hope to encompass the greatness of the source material - so instead she made a film that captured how the book made her feel. That is an honest and artistically defensible position. It is also one that immediately distances the film from any obligation to fidelity. Fennell has described the adaptation as simultaneously being Wuthering Heights and not being it - a paradox that critics have found either liberating or evasive, depending on their tolerance for auteur self-assertion.
The casting of Jacob Elordi - tall, pale, and conventionally striking - as Heathcliff has drawn particular scrutiny. Brontë's text repeatedly describes Heathcliff as dark-skinned, a detail widely interpreted as marking him as racially other within the social world of the Yorkshire moors. That otherness is inseparable from his outsider status, his mistreatment, and his rage. Fennell has addressed this directly, framing her casting as a personal imaginative response to the novel rather than a definitive one - noting that the book invites a new interpretation every year. That argument has satisfied some and frustrated others, particularly those who feel the racial dimension of the character is not incidental to his story.
Critical Reception and the Limits of Provocation
The film currently holds a polarizing position on Rotten Tomatoes and carries an IMDb rating of 6.1 - numbers that reflect not indifference but genuine disagreement. Reviewers who have praised the film cite its cinematography, the chemistry between Robbie and Elordi, and Fennell's willingness to treat the material as visceral rather than decorative. Those who have resisted it tend to argue that the film's sensual and "carnal" approach - including explicit scenes that have no direct parallel in the novel - substitutes physical intensity for the psychological complexity that makes Brontë's work endure.
This tension is familiar territory in literary adaptation. The question is never whether a filmmaker has the right to reinterpret a canonical text - they always do - but whether the reinterpretation illuminates something true about the original or merely replaces it with the filmmaker's own preoccupations. Fennell's previous work, including Promising Young Woman and the BBC series Killing Eve, demonstrated a consistent interest in female desire, power, and punishment. Applied to Wuthering Heights, that lens produces a film that feels coherent as a Fennell project, even when it feels remote from Brontë.
Where to Watch the Film and How to Access It
Following its theatrical release, Wuthering Heights has completed its transition into digital distribution and is now available across multiple subscription and rental platforms. Streaming is currently available on:
- HBO Max - for subscribers in supported regions, including the United Kingdom following the platform's expansion into the UK market
- NOW - streaming in the United Kingdom
- Crave - available to subscribers in Canada
For viewers who prefer to rent or purchase rather than stream via subscription, the film is available on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home (US), Plex (US and Canada), Rakuten TV (UK), and Sky Store (UK). Rental and purchase pricing varies by platform and region.
Viewers outside supported regions who wish to access the film through their home-country catalog can do so using a Virtual Private Network. A VPN routes internet traffic through servers in a chosen country, allowing access to geo-restricted content - a legitimate use case for travelers or expatriates attempting to reach services they already subscribe to. Well-regarded options include ExpressVPN, which operates across more than 3,000 servers in over 100 countries, and NordVPN, Surfshark, and CyberGhost for those seeking alternatives at different price points. VPN use also adds a layer of privacy protection on public networks, reducing exposure on unsecured connections.
Why This Adaptation Matters Beyond the Controversy
The debate around Fennell's Wuthering Heights is, at its most productive, a debate about what adaptation is for. If the purpose is preservation - to bring a canonical text to new audiences in recognizable form - then a faithful, carefully cast production serves that goal best. If the purpose is interpretation - to use a known story as raw material for a new artistic statement - then fidelity becomes an obstacle rather than a virtue. Neither position is wrong. Both produce valuable work when executed with honesty.
What distinguishes Fennell's film from straightforwardly bad adaptation is that she has not misunderstood Brontë - she has consciously departed from her, on her own terms and with declared intent. Whether that departure produces a film worth watching depends on what the viewer brings to it. Those who come expecting a definitive retelling will likely leave dissatisfied. Those who come prepared for Fennell's particular sensibility applied to one of literature's most psychologically brutal love stories may find the film genuinely arresting. The Rotten Tomatoes divide suggests the audience for each response is roughly equal in size.
