On Valentine’s Day 2026, audiences were treated to a bold, if polarizing, cinematic reimagining of Emily Brontë’s classic novel with Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.” Starring Jacob Elordi as the brooding Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as the tempestuous Cathy, the film arrived amid high expectations, given Fennell’s reputation for stylish, provocative filmmaking and the star power of its leads. But as the curtain fell, critics and viewers alike found themselves divided—some dazzled by its visual audacity, others left cold by its lack of emotional spark.
According to 828newsNOW, Fennell’s adaptation is less a faithful retelling than a fever dream inspired as much by pop culture as by Brontë. The reviewer didn’t mince words, calling the film “about as romantic as a sneeze, but just as gooey,” a nod to the film’s preoccupation with slime, goop, and other viscous substances that seem to ooze from every frame. If you were hoping for a sweeping, heart-stopping romance, you might find yourself instead wondering how Margot Robbie managed to keep a straight face while stuffing grass into Elordi’s mouth, or why a montage of fully-clothed grunting set to Charli XCX passes for passion.
Yet the film’s failings in the romance department are only part of the story. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is a visual spectacle, with set and costume design that dares to be different. Cathy’s bedroom, for instance, is wallpapered with motifs resembling her own skin—freckles, moles, and veins included—a detail that’s both inventive and, perhaps, a little unsettling. Costume choices, meanwhile, feature cellophane wrapping and crinkly materials, a far cry from traditional period garb. The reviewer at 828newsNOW admits, “I did not always like the set design, but it was always bold.”
But boldness alone can’t save a film whose central relationship lacks chemistry. The age difference between the leads—Robbie, at 35, playing a character meant to be a teenager, and Elordi, seven years her junior, cast as her older counterpart—proved distracting. “If Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie had any sort of chemistry, sexual or otherwise, this might have been a different story,” the review laments. Instead, their scenes together feel awkward and mismatched, leaving the audience uninvested in their doomed love.
Variety’s coverage takes a different tack, offering an inside look at the painstaking work that went into the film’s hair and makeup—a creative process almost as intricate as the tangled relationships at the heart of the story. Director Emerald Fennell handed Sian Miller, her longtime hair and makeup department head, a mood board filled with images of architecture, landscape, fashion, and even kids with grass-stained knees. The goal was to create a look that reflected the film’s themes of jealousy, vengeance, and lust, while also tracking the characters’ emotional journeys.
Margot Robbie’s Cathy, for example, sports more than 35 distinct hairstyles, each designed to signal a different stage in her life and psyche. Some of these styles earned colorful nicknames—“Vagina braids” and “Jesus Elordi” among them. The latter refers to one of Heathcliff’s two main looks: the wild, unkempt orphan and the suave, clean-shaven gentleman, dubbed “Darcy Elordi” in a playful nod to Jane Austen’s iconic hero. According to Miller, Elordi was game to grow out his hair and beard for the role, but continuity challenges meant she had to master the art of recreating his facial hair from scratch, even under the punishing winds of the Yorkshire Moors. “I had to convince Emerald that I could recreate the beard in the Moors,” Miller told Variety, describing how she painstakingly laid on each hair by hand, testing the result with a makeshift water cannon to ensure it would hold up on set.
Attention to detail extended to the smallest touches. Young Heathcliff is missing a tooth, so when he returns years later, a prosthetic 18-karat gold tooth was created for Elordi, adding a subtle sparkle to his transformation. For Cathy, the changes are even more pronounced. After breaking her ankle while spying on the neighbors—a plot twist that sets the tragic love triangle in motion—she is whisked away to Thrushcross Grange and thrust into a world of luxury. Her hair becomes softer, adorned with ribbons to match her new dresses, and even her freckles fade as she spends more time indoors. When Cathy returns to Wuthering Heights, her look hardens, her hair styled into victory rolls nicknamed “horns,” signaling her emotional turmoil and the cat-and-mouse game she resumes with Heathcliff.
One particularly striking detail is the use of real and prosthetic hair throughout the set. Isabella, Cathy’s rival, presents her with a doll featuring braids made from Cathy’s own hair, and the bedroom is decorated with strands collected from her hairbrush—a visual metaphor for the entanglements that define their lives. “The look on Cathy’s face is disturbing, and so begins this endless round of dress up,” Miller explained, highlighting how hair and makeup were used to underscore the characters’ psychological states.
The film’s 51-day shoot was a whirlwind of creative experimentation, with Miller and her team employing everything from durable makeup for freckles to prosthetic decals for the climactic scenes of Cathy’s decline. In Fennell’s adaptation, Cathy dies of sepsis poisoning after a pregnancy complicated by her affair with Heathcliff. For her deathbed scenes, Robbie’s skin was made to resemble “wet concrete” to convey the severity of her illness, and leeches—crafted by the art department—were applied in a desperate attempt to save her. “Emerald and I had a meeting with a medical advisor, and I’ve done a lot of research into how that can look, and so that was taken from real reference,” Miller said, emphasizing the commitment to realism even in the film’s most surreal moments.
Despite the meticulous craftsmanship behind the camera, “Wuthering Heights” ultimately struggles to find its footing as a romance. Its 136-minute runtime feels “mammoth” for a film that, according to 828newsNOW, “wants so desperately to be sexy but ends up so very dull.” The visual sumptuousness and inventive styling are undeniable, but they can’t compensate for a lack of emotional resonance between the leads. As the reviewer wryly concludes, Fennell might have been better suited to directing a music video for Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” than attempting a feature-length adaptation of Brontë’s novel.
For all its flaws, though, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” stands as a testament to the risks and rewards of reimagining a literary classic for the modern screen. It’s a film that dares to be different, even if it doesn’t always succeed, and one that will likely spark debate—and maybe even a few laughs—for years to come.