Review: Wuthering Heights

1. It is a very 2026 movie
2. Was it a bad movie? Yes. Did I enjoy myself? Yes.
3. If you’ve read the book, you should simply forget that you’ve read the book and watch the movie. They closely follow similar plot points… but this could also be a movie adaptation of the princess bride.
4. This movie is high production value bad Dramione fan fiction.
5. This is exactly the kind of movie I expect people to make in 2026. This is the kind of movie people are going to take screengrabs of with captions on and tag themselves. This is the kind of movie that people are going to shorten into 180seconds to monetise their shitty YouTube-shorts-driven channels. This is the kind of movie that exists for people to write about, not for the art of it at all. This is fine.
6. Give the person in charge of visuals a raise. Starting from the typeface (which is why I went to watch the movie in the first place), all the colors were so saturated. Rich. Evocative.
7. Give the post-production person a paycut please. I don’t actually know if AI was used it to finishing of this movie, but it felt like it. Some backgrounds were too smooth, others didn’t make visual sense.
8. It feels like Jacob Elordi has been typecast into playing only Nate-like roles. I’m not complaining, I think? Bad Boys are certain one of the boys of all time.
9. I don’t get some of the plot. I don’t get it. Why do we start by showing the public hanging? Why do we focus on the dead man’s stiffy? Why is a lady shaking her bosom at him? Why do we never revisit any of this again? Why does Isabella allow herself to participate in the sexual depravity that Heathcliff puts her through (especially in the context of the times)?
10. The violence feels gratuitous and uncouth. It’s just plain uncomfortable. The scene with the slaughter of the dead pig, all the jellied things. Ugh.
11. The costumes are gorgeous. The set design is breath-taking. The moors are so lovely.
12. Charli did a decent job with the soundtrack, but she could have put the effort in to a different album-long music video and it would have been less forgettable. This is classic Charli. Every time she flips, she immediately has to flop.
13. At 150ish minutes of runtime, this is not something I will watch again. I don’t even expect to think about this movie again. But I suspect the visuals will come back to me when I least expect it.
14. I gave up 20% of the way through reading this book when I was very young. It felt too tedious. Now I’m going to have to pick it up again, even if the book has nothing to do with the movie, just because of the visuals it has left me with.
15. I can’t wait to read some obscure piece of literature 15 years from now that is going to reference wallpaper containing a birthmark from the left cheek.