Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi somehow make Wuthering Heights work

REVIEWS · REVIEW

Emerald Fennell's gothic reboot, now streaming on HBO Max, is delightfully unhinged and occasionally brilliant—mostly because both leads are Australian and visibly committed to the bit.

Wuthering Heights has arrived on HBO Max as a film that should not work and yet, against every reasonable prediction, does. Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff were the subject of six months of online chatter—the prevailing sentiment being that two Australians playing two of English literature's most stubbornly English characters was a recipe for disaster. Pre-release discourse centred on authenticity, accent work, and the fundamental question of whether Fennell had lost her mind.

Fennell had not lost her mind. What she has done is lean so hard into her signature aesthetic—violent eroticism, anachronistic needle-drops layered over period costuming, Gothic moors that resemble an A24 fever dream more than Yorkshire—that the film's own audacity becomes its greatest asset. Robbie is, frankly, a revelation. She plays Cathy with a kind of feral intelligence, a woman who wants everything and the destruction of everything in equal measure. It is not a subtle performance, but it is not attempting subtlety. Elordi commits entirely to Heathcliff's spiral, moving through the film with the controlled rage of a man who has read the source material and decided to do it angrier.

The film's visual language is where Fennell stakes her bet. Wide shots of the moors are drenched in colour—burnt orange, deep purple, sickly green—and the interiors of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights feel less like period recreation and more like the inside of a fever dream conducted by someone who has watched too many music videos. A Phoebe Bridgers track plays over a scene of Cathy on horseback. A The National song underscores Heathcliff's return. It should feel ridiculous. Sometimes it does. More often, it works.

The critical consensus has divided, predictably, along Fennellian lines: half the film-writing world is calling it a masterpiece of Gothic reinterpretation; the other half is calling it 'lurid for its own sake' and 'style over substance'. Both assessments are technically correct, though the distinction matters less than it might. Australian audiences, by and large, have skipped the discourse and decided it is a W. Partly this is because both leads are Australian and visibly relishing the opportunity to make a film that is genuinely unhinged. Partly it is because the film is genuinely unhinged.

There are moments where Fennell overshoots—a sex scene that goes on fractionally too long, a moment of violence that tips from Gothic into exploitation without earning it. The pacing in the second hour threatens to collapse under the weight of its own earnestness. But the film rights itself each time, usually with Robbie or Elordi delivering a line with such commitment that you forgive the excess. By the time the film ends on a moor in the rain, with both leads drenched and furious, it has somehow earned its own melodrama.

**★★★★☆**

Wuthering Heights is now streaming on HBO Max in Australia. Runtime: 2 hours 8 minutes.

A Marrickville woman in her early 30s, reached by phone on Thursday afternoon, confirmed that she had watched the film in one sitting while texting her housemate: "It's actually good and also completely insane and I think Margot Robbie just became a real actor." At press time, she was reportedly considering a full Brontë rewatch.

It should feel ridiculous. Sometimes it does. More often, it works.— Brainrot Reviews

Filed by Vicki Derwent — The Brainrot Desk