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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

The Dark Truth about Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights, written by Emily Brontë in 1847, depicts a gothic world full of violence and passion, set against the wild Yorkshire Moors.

So how did the daughter of a clergyman create such a story? How was it received at the time? And what darkness and intrigue happened in the Brontê's lives that could have influenced such stories?

With a new Wuthering Heights film being released, Anthony and Maddy are exploring that world with you in today's episode.

It’s one of relentless death and tragedy, wild creativity, and supernatural belief, all to the backdrop of an industrial Victorian England.

If you're interested to find out more, you can watch the documentary Death at the Parsonage: The Brontês, on HistoryHit.com.

This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.

I have two theories: one, I think people have strong negative opinions about its director, whom they see as privileged and chronically off-key when it comes to stories that contend with class; and two, I think people firmly made up their minds about it before they saw it and I think this because everyone keeps accusing Fennell of turning this beloved piece of gothic lit a “horned-up bodice ripper” even though all the sex scenes are fully clothed.

Also, I am pretty sure the marketing of “Wuthering Heights” as “the greatest love story of all time” is tongue firmly in cheek. As in the book, the relationships are toxic and you’ll hate everyone in this movie.

I keep encountering (not incorrect) criticism that this rich text has been taken and dumbed down; there is a lot that has been left out, including the second half of the book, and that has left people wanting. I saw one critic call it anti-intellectual. (Jen Zoratti in Winnipeg Free Press)

Sin embargo, me pareció realmente frustrante que la película parezca detenerse justo antes del abismo. Coquetea con el melodrama criminal, incluso con el horror, pero finalmente regresa al terreno de la tragedia clásica. Después de alejarse tanto del espíritu de Brontë, me quedé con la sensación de que pudo haber ido todavía más lejos y convertirse en algo completamente nuevo, más retorcido y, quizá, más memorable. Pensaba que ya que se alejaba tanto del material original, merecería la pena, pero me ha dejado con ganas de más. (Belén Prieto in Espinof) (Translation)

Por supuesto que no todas las películas ni ninguna forma de arte está obligada a “decir algo”, bajar un mensaje, una idea o una filosofía. Su único objetivo puede ser entretener y contar una buena historia, del género que sea. Pero si ni siquiera se puede encontrar eso, es una decepción. 

Quizás por eso, el personaje de Nelly en esta versión de Cumbres borrascosas sea de los más fuertes. Cuando en un punto del relato el personaje quiere que todo lo que está sucediendo entre Heathcliff y Catherine termine de una buena vez y frustrada, hace todo lo que puede para cortar el vínculo, es difícil no sentirse identificado. (Nicolás Tabárez in El Observador) (Translation)

 Bad films are one thing, but to introduce an entire generation to Brontë’s brilliant novel with this nonsense is a travesty. The only redeeming feature in the whole sorry affair is the score by Charlie XCX. Mesmerising and discordant, it alone reflects the novel’s mood, with a darkness that should have been swirling across the moors into Cathy and Heathcliff’s blood. Unfortunately for the film-goer this mood remains confined to the music. Perhaps if Fennell had followed the example of Kate Bush and condensed her movie into a three-minute music video, she may have been more successful. (Lucy Nichols in Counterfire)

 In the film, though, Heathcliff is white. And worse, the two main impediments to the romance plot are people of color. Instead of a story about the brutalizing force of racism, Fennell gives us a story about how an effete Asian man (Edgar Linton, played by Shazad Latif) and a scheming Asian woman (Nelly Dean, played by Hong Chau) separate the destined white lovers. 

I doubt this is exactly what Fennell meant to say. But Heathcliff’s skin color is very apparent in the book and has certainly been much discussed in academic and pop culture criticism. A director smart enough to understand and respond to so many of the film’s themes could have, and should have, engaged with its racial aspects as well. The fact that she didn’t mars the film irreparably. (Noah Bertlatsky in Chicago Reader)

This book was quite literally shaved down to bits and pieces, appealing to the mass media. To do that, this movie becomes overtly sexual, simple in concept, and purely aesthetic. 

Don’t get me wrong, the soundtrack is good, and the cinematography is beautiful. But this isn’t ‘Wuthering Heights’. 

Every time this movie is called that, I feel Emily Brontë roll over in her grave. (Ronin Vasquez in HerCampus)

 However, I truly cannot shake the feeling that Fennell clung to Brontë's ‘Wuthering Heights’ as an excuse to use the beautiful backdrops of Yorkshire and the complex, twisted love story of Cathy and Heathcliff to create something nicely wrapped in time for Valentine's Day.

I think if it had been its own movie - inspired by but not dictated by - the title and story of Wuthering Heights, it could have been an excellent watch. It didn't need to be an adaptation of Brontë's book; therefore, it didn't need to split characters into civilised and uncivilised purely by accent. It didn't really need to be set in Yorkshire at all. (Lyra Auld in Yorkshire Live)

 Never before now have I felt so uncomfortable during the process of watching a movie, but I would be remiss not to mention the film’s limited redeeming qualities. The cinematography, much like Fennell’s other works, is impressive on occasion. The soundtrack of “Wuthering Heights,” produced by artist Charli xcx, is listenable in a vacuum, though its poor placement within the movie often acts to the scene’s tonal detriment.

1/5 – If looking for a good romance, a good adaptation or a good film, look elsewhere.

I could not recommend this film under any circumstances. Especially if you happen to be a fan of Emily Brontë’s novel, stay away by all means. There are far better romances, and far better films in theaters currently. (Foster Mayhall in The Auburn Plainsman)

 If you hold any kind of literary purity, then “Wuthering Heights” is not for you. But we don’t need another stuffy adaptation of a 19th century gothic romance, and it’s much better and more accessible to have what Fennell gives: a modernized feminist remix of Brontë’s classic that incorporates modern sexual sensibility into the classic story.

Fennell, whose previous work includes Promising Young Woman (2020) and Saltburn (2023), seems to think that subtlety is for cowards, and while that approach would not work for a typical Wuthering Heights adaptation, it certainly works for this one. “Wuthering Heights” is so trashy it almost becomes goofy, but for the audience it’s aiming for and for its commitment to the tone it’s striking, it is very good trash. (Jim Hunter in Tristate Homepage)

 It's a "spectacle" of the highest order, but beneath the gorgeous gowns and the "bodice-ripping" sex scenes, some might find the heart of the story has been traded for pure, unadulterated "ragebait" provocation.

Is it a masterpiece? Probably not. Is it a "must-watch" cinematic event that will have everyone talking at the water cooler on Monday? Absolutely.

Fennell has crafted a "Wuthering Heights" for the Instagram generation: high on atmosphere, drenched in desire, and utterly unapologetic about its own excesses. (New Straits Times)

 There are a number of elements that make Bronte’s novel a commanding literary presence. It’s about personal trauma, spousal cheating, paternal abuse, jealousy, violence, anger, and outcasts from a society that believes in walls between the classes. In the case of the book, one of the walls is bleak and utterly racist. Did Fennell misinterpret the novel? I find that doubtful. The answer is that she is a fearless director who willingly marches to the beat of her own drum. Her talent is prodigious. Ultimately, Fennell’s missteps mean “Wuthering Heights” isn’t compelling enough to wholeheartedly recommend. (Michael Calleri in The Daily Star)

The film's hair and make-up designer Siân Miller, shares her approach to crafting Cathy's looks in Harper's Bazaar. Nine, Chilango recommend reading Jane Eyre if you loved Wuthering Heights. Infobae talks about when Wuthering Heights as published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell...well, the website says Ellis Bay. Fama (México) talks about three of the Mexican telenovelas that adapted (sort of) Wuthering Heights: Encadenados (1988, 180 episodes), Triunfo del Amor (2010, 176 episodes), Lo que la Vida me Robó (2013, 197 episodes. Purewow gives you 'Wuthering Heights'-Inspired Pieces to get Margot Robbie's look.

Andi Zeisler in Salon connects the Gen Z increasing love of yearning with Wuthering Heights:

Generationally, the Zs don’t seem to share much common ground with “Wuthering Heights” author Emily Brontë. But the 1847 novel, her only published work, could be considered the ur-text of yearning. So it makes sense that members of Gen Z are among those most amped for “Saltburn” writer-director Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” which opened just in time, the trailer makes sure to note, for Valentine’s Day. (...)

There might even be a case to be made that Emily Brontë herself found yearning preferable to a flesh-and-blood love; it’s definitely one reason why many Brontë fans were salty that 2022’s fictionalized biopic “Emily” retconned the origin story so that Brontë herself had an obsessive love affair. What if this iteration of “Wuthering Heights” exists precisely because it’s comforting to think the happiest ending is made possible by a nonexistent beginning? Would that really be so bad? I don’t think so, but it also doesn’t matter: In times this uncertain, yearning doesn’t have to signal the absence of something real.

Late one night, an 18-year-old Kate Bush wrote her song ‘Wuthering Heights’ without having read its namesake novel by Emily Brontë. She hadn’t even seen a full adaptation. Her inspiration came after catching the last few minutes of a 1967 TV version of the book in which Catherine Earnshaw’s ghost begs to be let in at Heathcliff’s window.

Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” has a strikingly similar origin. The writer-director has described wanting to make the version of the book she imagined when she read it at age 14. Hence, the scare quotes around the film’s title, and its pointed departures from the text that produced hysteria online before the full-length trailer was even released. The teaser, in particular, painted the film as an erotic-thriller-cum-fairytale: a wet and wild affair with notes of Marie Antoinette, Gone With The Wind and The Handmaiden. And yet, provocation seems to be the whole point. By way of the sensuous imagery, and by playing up the on- and off-screen chemistry of its leads Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, a seemingly never-ending discourse gave way to packed cinemas on opening weekend, and global box-office results.

It was clear from the marketing that this film would adopt a bodice-ripper interpretation of the novel, accentuating the romance and the sex with a Mills & Boon-esque poster, and a tagline ("Come undone") that seemed pilfered from Fifty Shades. This came full circle in a scene in which Heathcliff lifts Cathy up by her bodice. That is, until she resists his amorous advances, and he puts her down.

The truth is that the film skirts around the hardcore porn-on-the-Moors viewers might have been anticipating. There’s an absence of nudity, and of barbarism beyond what is basically included for laughs. Despite a penchant for murderous dirty talk, Cathy’s love interest is not a callous dom – his most serious crime is being exceptionally horny. Elordi’s Heathcliff tells Cathy what feels like hundreds of times during their encounters how much he loves her. This is not the revenge-poisoned Heathcliff from the novel who cannot be trusted around dogs.

While many of us were expecting – or even hoping for – a more brutish Heathcliff, one that reflects the wicked character in the book, it is perhaps no wonder that Fennell chose to keep her hero on the side of the harmless heartthrobs. One of the most appealing aspects of the bodice-ripper genre is that it allows readers to imagine sex, and even cruelty, within a format they control, and on their own terms. In teenage Fennell’s imagination, this barbaric anti-hero is softened, and the choice seems designed to align with the commercial success the film was destined to achieve.

Such a loose adaptation style turns the film into fanfiction. It’s a well-calibrated decision, considering the majority of viewers will not have pored over – or even witnessed the last few minutes of a TV version of – the book. This approach is most evident in moments that flauntingly defy reality. The lovers are almost frighteningly alone on the Moors, in the Linton house, in the garden. One is left wondering: where are the other characters, the servants? Where, in fact, is the shame? There is none. Within a fantasy, the pair are able to experience passion, at least for a time, without consequence or interruption.

By straying far from the original story, Fennell creates something so original that cinema goers simply cannot agree on what they’ve seen. Some say it "spark[s] a deep lizard-brained pleasure"; many are "disappointed and upset"; the ratings are through the roof. This divisiveness is a feat in itself, especially when today’s criticism scene is defined by the mounting pressure to give every piece of media a simpering, sycophantic review, or else be called out for not letting "people enjoy things". The two women (Robbie and Fennell) at the heart of this controversy are seasoned provocateurs. Indeed, it’s hard to point to any other film in recent years that has generated this much uproar while becoming a zeitgeist-defining, merchandise-selling mega-hit – except, of course, Barbie.

Fennell’s film winds you up. It taunts you, baiting and switching until you come away feeling slightly dizzy and slightly foolish. As the motion picture receives a thorough drubbing from critics, one cannot shake the image of a 14-year-old hiding in the wings and laughing uproariously at the fuss she has caused. It’s a form of schadenfreude not just reserved for children; it appears as a through-line in all of Fennell’s works to date, but is most fully realised here. Saltburn, especially, seemed formulated to stir up impassioned post-viewing debate. With “Wuthering Heights” she goes a step further. In choosing a pillar of the literary canon as her source material, Fennell guarantees audiences would be hand-wringing, sweating and clamouring to share their opinions – from the moment of its announcement until weeks after its opening.

The heart-stopping visuals complement this teenage dreamworld. Cathy is cloaked in billowing fabrics and gauzy veils, her lower half swallowed by red full-skirted gowns. Heathcliff goes from rugged and sweaty to Mr Darcy, à la Colin Firth, with the face of a boyband member. The two run from and towards one another on a delightfully wild landscape: rolling hills jutted with clusters of expressionistic rocks, perpetually stricken by fog or rain. The Linton home is a doll house of gaucheness and glamour, and all of it glistens on VistaVision film. No expense was spared. The limitless budget reflects the limitless possibilities of a schoolgirl’s imagination.

Like Bush, Fennell’s creative power is unrestrained by convention; they both created works that soar in their wide-eyed wonder. Fanfiction, after all, is the way in which most highbrow literature is circulated among the masses, whether through reimagining or lyrical inspiration. Taylor Swift, after all, is responsible for introducing TikTok teens to Dylan Thomas and Hamlet. Fennell’s unabashed style succeeds in making the gruesome act of adapting a work obvious. What others are scared to touch, she rips in half, dousing the remains in a medley of suggestive fluids. And if the box-office numbers are anything to go off, perhaps a bold, brash approach is exactly what cinema needs. (Daniella Parete Clarke)

Some filmmakers work within genre constraints. Others push against them. Still others think hard about how to subvert them. But Fennell does something altogether different and with such glee that even when I feel as if I’m drowning in her excess, I can’t help but love it: She swallows genres whole, like some kind of directorial Kirby, then regurgitates them according to her own vision.

The results retain traces of some corner of her subconscious; her exhilarating dream logic always teeters between ecstasy and nightmare. It is heady and feminine and I find it, more often than not, delicious.

“Wuthering Heights” fits this mode, even more than her previous two films (“Saltburn” and “Promising Young Woman”), and it embodies what’s singular about her work. In the foreword to a new edition of Emily Brontë’s novel, she writes that Brontë’s book is too slippery to cram into a two-hour movie, and thus “what I have attempted to do is adapt my own experience of reading it for the first time.”

And her “Wuthering Heights” is indeed less an adaptation of a classic text than it is an adaptation of a feeling. Somehow it’s very dirty and very chaste at the same time. There is plenty of sex, and yet the maximum amount of nudity allowed is a topless Heathcliff. We understand there are some sadomasochistic goings-on but we, like Cathy, are not allowed to watch, only to listen. Yet all of this may make sense.

Imagine yourself a 16-year-old girl, inexperienced, naïve, stumbling across “Wuthering Heights” — the novel, I mean. There’s no one in the world but these characters and their chilly windswept moors, their doll’s house lives filled with misery and longing. You picture these strange places, with their strange names, inhabited by wild, cruel, passionate lovers and lunatics.

There’s nothing explicitly sexual, and yet you’re no fool: You can sense an erotic undercurrent. Now imagine, in your daydreams, Brontë’s story begins to mix with the bodice-rippers you sneak from your favorite aunt’s bookshelf. You can’t quite bring yourself to imagine Brontë’s characters in those settings, but snatches of that fantasy snag on your psyche nonetheless.

That’s Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” and the degree to which you enjoy it may depend on your intimacy with that feeling. This is why I have now come to eagerly anticipate a new Fennell release, even if I still think “Promising Young Woman” was mostly an interesting failure. Her movies have a feverish, obsessive quality, and so do her characters, always getting into a lather over something, doing destructive and gross things to feed their desire.

Take the fact that “Wuthering Heights” and “Saltburn” both seem concocted at least in some measure to give her camera an excuse to linger on Jacob Elordi. In each film, his character — Heathcliff, Felix — arranges himself before others in a manner calculated to maximize his appeal, then smirks knowingly. And the people who covet him, who don’t want to but can’t help themselves, are driven mad with desire, willing to risk their dignity to get him for a moment. That kind of thing used to happen in studio movies all the time but is not so easy to find these days. It’s impudent. He’s got you. She’s got you. [...]

Then there is “Wuthering Heights,” which boils Brontë’s novel — which is about cruelty and passion, but also class and inheritance and even race — down to what lingers after you read it: Heathcliff’s all-consuming, undeniably physical obsession with Cathy, who returns his ardor. In so doing, Fennell proclaims that this classic you probably read in high-school English is fundamentally a romance for the ages. To overintellectualize it is to do it a disservice. (Alissa Wilkinson)

Following up from it being like a TikTok book adaptation, I resented that it was advertised as a women’s chickflick and I hated the marketing for the movie. For instance, in her appearance at Jimmy Kimmel Live, Robbie talks about arranging a private screening of the movie for her friends, describing them as “frothing at the mouth” for Elordi. This is just crude and tasteless. Another example is the Wuthering Heights lingerie ads that pop up whenever I am on social media.  People can enjoy this movie and people can like movies with a little smut, but what I hate is when this is just associated with women and what women like. This approach divides sex into what men like and what women like, enforcing a socially constructed idea of what desire is for people. Because of this, the movie and the marketing for it feel very insincere and misogynistic: a dumbed-down version of a very intricate story made very shallow, fit for women’s viewing. We all have our guilty pleasures, but there is no need to associate them with gender. Otherwise, it creates this perception that any unsophisticated movie will be labeled as a “chick movie”. This ultimately makes the feminine seem less intellectually stimulating. 

I have to admit that I still had a good time when I was able to not think of it as an adaptation of the book. I went with my flatmates on Valentine’s Day and we had such a good time in the cinema, sharing gasps and laughs with many other friend groups like ours. It’s a bit like watching Twilight. It doesn’t have a lot of substance but it still manages to be entertaining. (Lara Begüm Yener)

There’s been a lot of controversy about the casting of Jacob Elordi, a white Australian, as Heathcliffe in Emerald Fennel’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights, particularly that a white man could portray a character, who although never explicitly stated to be what we in 2026 would call a racial minority, has been deemed by many readers to be one.

I fundamentally disagree with the ideas that portraying Heathcliff as a minority increases the literary fidelity of a given adaptation. Brontë’s Heathcliff is described as [excusing the now slurs] a “dark-skinned gipsy”, “Lascar”, or “an American or Spanish castaway”. His racial identity is ambiguous, and I must admit, when I first read the novel, I did not assume him to even be more than a shiftless, wraithlike character. He appears as a “devil” and a “blackguard”, a term with unknown etymology, but no apparent reference to race. The point is Heathcliff is as a character both within the novel, and subtextually, a portrayal of the Other. Thus, to portray him as any one race – and there are arguments that Heathcliff’s racial ambiguity is used to investigate the treatment of the Irish during the 1840s, during the Potato Famine – or even to explore colonial stereotypes and projects that Victorian’s had, all in one novel is what makes it a masterpiece. If you define Heathcliffe’s race monomodally, you also reduce the nebulousness of his gender, and the theme of gender, and the themes of class, both of which Emily Brontë is grappling with in the novel.

A corollary to this argument is that Heathcliff as a racialised character, “going from victim to abuser”, is thus adequate representation for racialised people. This is an argument I disagree with. By attempting to sympathise with Heathcliff because of his Otherness, we reduce him from his actual role within the novel, that of a human character. He is both tyrant and victim: there is no transformation from any one singular state to the other, precisely because the novel is a critique of the Enlightenment, through its place within the Romantic canon. It is a brilliant novel as it grapples and diverts the cultural and social practises of its time in such a brilliant way. That is why it’s a classic. To view a gothic text through the lens of likeability or being problematic is emblematic of this media literacy crisis.

I am not proposing that Heathcliff must be white, as whiteness is the norm it is not the blank slate upon which the ambiguities of his character are drawn on. Instead, I fundamentally disagree that one can even compress the novel through a visual medium. Any interpretation is not designed to be a slavish reproduction, aiming to capture the essence of the original work of art it is based upon. Instead, the new medium is in itself worthy of standing on its own: one sees the work of the creative team behind the film to explore the film through their individual perspectives.

Even from an identitarian perspective, I would not want the only representation of my race to be that of Heathcliff. I am acutely aware of the structural constraints of my life. I am aware that my identity is that of the fifth column. Yet, I would want it to be explored from my own mouth, from my own perspective. Emily Brontë’s mastery and genius is well examined, but both intertextually and meta-textually, Heathcliff is only explored through the voice of the (white) nararator Nelly, or through Brontë herself. I disagree with the assertion that a non-white voice would be better placed, or could do a better job, but racialised people deserve a chance to try (and fail) to create art on their own terms.

As a final note, I do not think Fennel’s adaption is good; having seen it, I think it will be viewed in retrospect as the perfect representation of art and its reception in society in the 2020s. The libidinous undercurrents, designed to shock the over-repressed and under-sexed Victorians, have been replaced by their opposite: a sanitised glossing for oversexed and under-repressed generation Z. We witness sex scenes and appropriated kink in lieu of the primordial tension at the heart of the novel, just as we see this within the “Romantasy” genre, or even in shows such as Heated Rivalry. Romance – best enjoyed, best exhibited within the subconscious, expressed as subtext – does not work when tropified and turned into pure graphic excess. To do so, fetishises our own human nature.

Perhaps, it will be seen as camp or perhaps, it is a moment of cultural reckoning for Hollywood and film as a medium. Wuthering Heights, the novel, had a mixed, if not negative reaction during its initial release. However, I doubt that the film will receive the same reappraisal. (Mohammad Majlisi)

It is deeply troubling that the drive of Brontë’s Isabella, a survivor of domestic abuse, has been reread to dramatically absolve her abuser. The girl sobbing behind me as the credits rolled attests to the success of this exoneration. Really, she should be crying over the scripting of violent abuse as consensual play. (Anna Drury)

From the cinematography to the costumes and soundtrack, this movie was breathtaking. It checked off everything a BookTok girl could ever want. However, for Brontë readers, the movie might not exactly have lived up to expectations like it did for us who melt for a whimsy storyline. (Rhenna Sexton) 

It’s fair to criticize the film for its straying from the source material and rejecting many of the themes that book readers respect about Bronte’s masterpiece. Admittedly, “Wuthering Heights” isn’t a sacred text to me, so I was not as bothered by such a large change. Especially because going into the film, I knew it was going to be different. Fennell was clear from early on that this adaptation of the story was going to diverge substantially from the source material; this is why the title intentionally has quotations. Instead of focusing on the changes, I enjoyed the movie for what it was, a visually striking, toxic romance. I just want to clearly caution that those expecting a strict book adaptation need to know what they are going into and prepare accordingly.

I knew I was going to like “Wuthering Heights,” but I didn’t know just how much I was going to love it. More than anything, the film (and its press tour) started to slightly conjure feelings from my “Titanic”-obsessed adolescence, where I watched the film over and over in theaters and devoured anything the actors did to promote the film. Will I watch this film as many times as I did “Titanic?” No, but I will definitely be seeing it again in theaters… and I implore you to see it in theaters as well. The brilliant score, gorgeous cinematography, and Elordi and Robbie’s beautiful faces should be enjoyed on the loudest, crispest screen you can find.

The cinematography is easily the film’s strongest element. From the delicate candle lighting in the Grange household to the dramatic color shifts that mirror the emotion of each scene, every frame feels intentional. The contrast between the gloomy, off-kilter shots at the Heights and the warmer, more refined symmetrical framing at the Grange visually reinforces the social and emotional divide central to the story.

The orchestral score, composed by Anthony Willis, carries much of the film’s emotional weight. Pop artist Charli XCX reinterpreted themes from the score into a companion album that is also incorporated into the film. While her additions are not necessary for the film to succeed musically, they bring a contemporary layer that adds something fresh to Brontë’s classic story. [...]

Despite divided reception, the film stands out for its visual ambition and atmospheric execution. It earns a 3.5 out of 5.

For viewers drawn to dramatic romance and striking cinematography, “Wuthering Heights” offers a visually immersive experience that is worth seeing on the big screen. (Sawer DeWitt)

For such a boisterous, visually breathtaking movie, the resulting story feels pretty one-dimensional. When the director favours cheap tricks to shock the audience over thoughtful narrative development, refusing to flesh out her protagonists, a timeless classic is reduced to a gimmick. This doesn’t seem to have put viewers off. The film earned over $83m (£61m) in its opening weekend. If you’re still thinking of buying tickets, I sincerely recommend that you pick up a copy of the book instead. Or perhaps take a trip to Haworth, to experience the magic of Brontë’s beloved moors for yourself. Then, if you’re still dissatisfied, watch the film. (Tilda Gladwell)

By now you might have read that the new “Wuthering Heights” movie is a little … different. Maybe a tad oversexed and stylized. Writer-director Emerald Fennell, they say, has gone and messed with a beloved classic. It’s a weird movie.

All of which may, to some extent, be true. But none of that changes a vital “Wuthering Heights” truth: Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel of obsessive, unrequited love and mutually assured destruction is a deeply, unabashedly strange piece of work, full of antisocial misfits and abject squalor, and committed to an exceedingly dark and eccentric view of human nature. It is, like many great works of literature, bonkers. No oddity that Fennell can extract or create can be as bizarre as the genuine article.

This is why I chuckle when I hear someone describe Fennell’s “Heights” as “horny” (a word that has always struck me as a little adolescent in the first place). Yes — and here come the spoilers — Catherine (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) have sex. Lots of sex, actually. The movie also indulges in the occasional S&M sequence. Things get kind of kinky over on these moors.

But not as kinky as the moment that Brontë slips in near the end of the novel, which doesn’t make it into Fennell’s film. I speak of Heathcliff’s disclosure to the servant Nelly that he dug up Catherine’s grave — not once, but twice. “I’ll have her in my arms again!” he exclaims. “If she be cold, I’ll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.” Talk about horny. Yes, this notion of undying love is romantic. It’s also quite creepy. And therein lies much of the power generated by a novel that more than once equates obsessive passion with a storm, or a spiritual sickness. The French call this amour fou, or “mad love.” (Chris Vogner)

Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” which, on the whole, I found bracingly cinematic, makes a number of departures from the source material — some of which worked better for me than others. (...)

It’s helpful to keep in mind that a movie’s source novel is just that: a source, or, if you will, a template. All that a filmmaker really owes a novelist is a screenwriting credit. (Chris Vogner)