The cinematic event of the year (so far) dropped last Friday: Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”. Fennell’s movies are known to piss people off. Both A Promising Young Woman and Saltburn resulted in fiery, divisive discourse, with her critics labelling the British director as having the “worst filmography ever”. At Dazed, many of us had high hopes for her adaptation of the 1847 novel. Saltburn may have been a film of “style and no substance”, as Patrick Sproull wrote in their review, but at least it was fun! We hoped the same for “Wuthering Heights” – and were mostly left disappointed. Unlike the Brat roundtable that divided us, “Wuthering Heights” brought us back together again (for the most part). Below, our team shares their thoughts on the romantic period drama.

HALIMA JIBRIL, CULTURE EDITOR: There were many points while watching “Wuthering Heights” when I tapped on my imaginary watch and asked my friends, “When is this shit gonna end?!” To be fair, I did take an edible, which is maybe why it felt like forever, but the movie is also low-key garbage (and two hours and 16 minutes long), which is probably the main reason it felt like I was gonna wuther away and die. The costuming felt offensive, along with much of the set design. Justice for the Yorkshire moors, y’all deserved better!

I saw the film in a full cinema at the Barbican on release day, and, to Fennell’s credit, I had the time of my life with a very energised crowd. But I did find that people were laughing at parts that were meant to be romantic and/or devastating – especially when Elordi yells at the end, “Someone get da bloody docta!” (I’m paraphrasing.) But, while I felt mostly negative towards the film, there were moments where my heart did swoon. Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie didn’t have great chemistry (and Robbie was cast poorly imo), but when it was good, it was really good. At the end of the day, I love a love story filled with desperation, and I did shed a tear or two or five at the end. But unfortunately, the bad outweighed the good. Also, every time I heard Charli xcx’s autotuned voice, I laughed, which I’m sure was not its intended effect. 🥲

DOMINIQUE SISLEY, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: I don’t care about sticking to the source material. I’m not a snob about that. As long as you capture its essence, or spirit, there are lots of wacky choices you can make. The problem with “Wuthering Heights” is that it is such a powerful, distinctive story: it’s about two wild and vindictive people, bound by the same soul, whose love leads to their mutual destruction and ravages everyone around them. It’s about the nature of toxic love, and the intergenerational rot caused by decades of displaced anger. Sadly, Fennell’s depiction strips all this out, bleaching out the darkness with it. Her version is a swoon-worthy romance, promoted in partnership with Doritos, whose sole goal is to draw as much attention as possible. It’s got all the subtlety of a school pantomime: we see a sunny 35-year-old Robbie – cast because of her mega-watt star power – playing a 16-year-old virgin, hammily reading lines that could only have been lifted from a pre-teen’s Wattpad account. And look, Elordi is sexy! I want him to fervently pursue me on a horse! But it’s slop, sorry.

HABI DIALLO, BRANDED CONTENT EDITOR: When I left the cinema I felt… nothing. There were moments I enjoyed – Cathy and Isabella’s dynamic felt closer to depicting how truly cruel and complex Cathy was. But the chemistry between her and Heathcliff did not feel believable. When the trailer came out last year, I thought the toxic passion between the two main protagonists might actually translate well, but in reality, there were very few moments where I felt engrossed in their dynamic. I wanted to feel tension so undeniable that I had to catch my breath. Elordi did make me swoon, but at no point did I think I’m so inspired by how much they hate to love each other, I need to reach out to anyone I hate to love.

I’ve seen a lot of people compare the film to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet adaptation, but other than the fact that both films are modern takes on classic literature, there are no similarities. The beauty of having a text with so much material is that there are almost infinite numbers of ways you can interpret different moments, either to honour or challenge the original work. I’m not sure if, in 30 years, this film will hold up in the same way R&J has. 

THOM WAITE, SENIOR WRITER: Hot take: film adaptations have zero responsibility to be faithful to the source text. There have been versions of Wuthering Heights released in 1920, 1939, 1967, 1992, 2009, 2011, and now 2026 – why would we want to see the exact same story, told the same way, over and over again? Lots of the best adaptations make the most of their cultural context to tell the story a different way, and let us experience things we couldn’t have in the past. Including Charli xcx needle-drops.

This might sound like a defence of Fennell’s film, but it’s not. Coming from a filmmaker who claims to push the boundaries of what’s acceptable on our screens today, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is so full of half-measures in both its style and content – maybe to preserve its 15 rating and rake in more ticket sales? – that it barely registers above an episode of Bridgerton on the scandal scale. In the end, it’s far less radical than the 1847 novel would have been in its day, and for that reason it doesn’t do the source material justice.

JAMES GREIG, FEATURES EDITOR: Winston Churchill once said, “If a man gives Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights one star on Letterboxd, he has no heart. But if he gives it five stars, he has no head.”

I was reminded of this adage on Friday when I went to see “Wuthering Heights”, a film that was neither as brilliant nor terrible as some early reviews had suggested. To be sure, there’s a lot wrong with it. While so badly miscast that it’s not really her fault, Robbie is awful – particularly in the earlier scenes when she’s playing Cathy like a petulant, simpering 14-year-old prefect. For all its attempts at transgression and “this ain’t your grandma’s Wuthering Heights” posturing, it’s a fairly sanitised version of Brontë’s novel, especially in its decision to reimagine Heathcliff’s abuse of Isabella as a consensual BDSM relationship. 

But on the plus side, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a good time. I enjoyed the ridiculous, ahistorical costume and set design, and for the most part thought the film looked good – Fennell’s visual style is garish but fun. As far as acting goes, Martin Clunes and Hong Chau are the MVPs. But the film’s biggest saving grace is the Charli xcx soundtrack; I’ve always loved Charli in angsty power-ballad mode and I think it’s one of her best ever albums.

EMILY DINSDALE, ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR: I enjoyed “Wuthering Heights”, but doing so required me to consciously disengage my critical faculties as I took my seat in the cinema. I knew it was going to be a very silly film, but I permitted myself not to care. A few of the costumes made me laugh out loud, and the whole thing felt almost entirely stitched together from references to other movies (notably Barry Lyndon, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Marie Antoinette and Gone With the Wind). 

My main point of contention has been with some of the marketing suggesting this version is more shocking than the book. Robbie has recently been quoted as saying, “There is actually not much kissing in the book, but we kiss a lot in the movie. We kiss everywhere.” In the novel, Heathcliff has Cathy’s body exhumed long after her death on two occasions so he can see her face. He defaces her coffin so that when he dies, their decomposing bodies will coalesce in the earth. Getting off with each other more than Emily Brontë explicitly describes seems a bit trivial compared to a desire so consuming that you can’t be happy until your mortal remains have intermingled.

I agree with nearly all of the criticisms I’ve heard levelled at Fennell’s film and I wouldn’t stir a muscle to defend it – it’s hollow, Robbie is badly cast, it seems to misunderstand the source material, and it was definitely 20 minutes too long. But Elordi is really sexy and I still managed to take pleasure in the ridiculous spectacle of it.

SOLOMON PACE-MCCARRICK, MUSIC WRITER: On our way to the cinema, my girlfriend and I decided to create bingo cards out of our predictions for Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”. Now, I wasn’t familiar with the source material at all, but the accuracy with which we were able to guess the new adaptation’s hammiest moments speaks volumes. I got one point for ‘barn sex’, half a point for ‘sensually churning butter’ (they were actually seductively kneading bread) and two points for ‘emotional horse riding to the sounds of Charli xcx’. Meanwhile, my girlfriend got points for: ‘voyeurism’, ‘slapping’, ‘bodice-ripping’, ‘orientalism’ and ‘a weird chess metaphor’. The script might read like Mumsnet fan-fiction – which, coincidentally, serves Heathcliff very well, because he says nothing at all for the majority of the film – but it was a great Valentine’s weekend activity. I’ll look back on “Wuthering Heights” fondly (and hope I never have to watch it again).