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WUTHERING HEIGHTS

“Lust and Jealousy on the Moors”

Family Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)

Entertainment Quality:

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Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

WUTHERING HEIGHTS is a new version of the 1847 English novel by Charlotte Brontë. It stars Margot Robie and Jacob Elordi as two hapless lovers, Cathy and Heathcliff. In the movie, Cathy’s alcoholic father brings an orphan boy home with him and allows Cathy to name him Heathcliff. They become close friends and by the time Cathy turns 17, lovers. However, Cathy starts spending time with a rich family, a young man named Edgar and his sister, Isabella. This leads to a misunderstanding between her and Heathcliff. Heathcliff runs away but returns several years later, only to find Cathy married to Edgar. So, he eventually marries Edgar’s sister out of spite. 

 WUTHERING HEIGHTS is sumptuously filmed, with first-rate acting, costuming and art direction. However, the filmmakers take an old fashioned love story and turns it into a crude tale of lust. WUTHERING HEIGHTS has frequent scenes of partially explicit adultery. It also includes some weird and depraved psychological abuse in the relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy’s sister-in-law. WUTHERING HEIGHTS also contains some foul language, including one strong profanity and three “f” words. 

Content:

(RoRo, Ab, Pa, LL, VV, SSS, N, AA, D, MM): 

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

  Strong Romantic worldview with some immoral pagan behavior where people are controlled by their emotions, lusts and jealousy, and a nun is mocked for being hypocritical in a short scene;

Foul Language:

  Four mostly light obscenities (including one “ah” word), three anachronistic “f” words,” one strong profanity using the Greek name for Messiah, and six light profanities (two of which sort of acknowledge the existence of God, though the movie otherwise doesn’t have any Christian, theistic content);

Violence:

  Movie opens with a public hanging that’s made to sound like a sex scene at first, a male character is whipped on his back for taking punishment that his female childhood friend deserved, a character dies in childbirth and loses the baby, a father drinks himself to death, servants slaughters a pig;

Sex:

  Sex scenes are partially depicted, but there are many of them, so it’s extreme overall and includes lots of adultery, some fornication (between a young woman and a young man her father had brought into the house and treated like a son, so it’s technically incestuous), and some marital sex, plus it’s implied in one scene that an older teenage girl is pleasuring herself, husband degrades his wife, but she gets a perverted kick out of it, and a boy crudely remarks in a public hanging that the hanged man is getting “a stiffy”, and a nun admonishes him and gives him a dirty look, but then gets a slightly prurient look on her own face;

Nudity:

  Upper male nudity and implied nudity in sex scenes, plus some female cleavage;

Alcohol Use:

  Some alcohol use and drunkenness in the female lead’s alcoholic father, who eventually drinks himself to death when he becomes older and not quite right in the head (this last condition becomes worse as he ages in the movie);

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

  Man smokes a pipe in one scene; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

  [SPOILERS involving jealousy and cruelty] Strong miscellaneous evil when housemaid becomes jealous of young woman’s close friendship with her father’s adopted son, and she deprives the lady of major information that leads to the big misunderstanding in the story between her and her lover that results in misery and tragedy for them and for others around them, and the two lovers become needlessly cruel to one another and the other people around them, but the woman becomes despondent and then the man does as well, generating sympathy for them. 

 

More Detail:

The 2026 version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS, the 1847 English novel by Charlotte Brontë, stars Margot Robie and Jacob Elordi as the two hapless lovers, Cathy and Heathcliff, who find themselves separated because of a tragic misunderstanding fueled by jealousy. Like other adaptations, this new version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS deletes several major characters, but what’s more regrettable is that it inserts graphic and frequent adultery into the story, adds some weird and depraved psychological abuse in the relationship between Heathcliff and the woman he marries after Cathy marries another man, and includes unnecessary foul language such as three anachronistic “f” words.  

 In the original novel, Cathy has an older brother and their father dies. Also, the original novel tells the story of Cathy’s daughter and Heathcliff’s son by his wife, Cathy’s sister-in-law. Heathcliff marries the sister-o-law out of spite against the wealthy landowner whom Cathy marries. The new version of the novel with Margot Robbie eliminates the character of Cathy’s older brother, who eventually becomes a terrible gambler and drunkard, and doesn’t have Cathy or her sister-in-law giving birth. 

 Thus, as this movie opens, Cathy is 6-years-old and her father, Mr. Earnshaw, is the inveterate gambler and drunkard and owner of their rundown estate, Wuthering Heights. Cathy is friends with her father’s Asian housemaid, Nelly. One day, Earnshaw brings home a quiet orphan boy to be his adopted son and allows Cathy to name the boy Heathcliff. The movie follows Cathy and Heathcliff as they explore the countryside together. Cathy is a little bossy, but she and Heathcliff become inseparable. At one point, they hold hands. Meanwhile, Nelly is sad that she’s lost Cathy’s friendship. 

 Cut to 11 years later. Although Heathcliff is her father’s adopted child, Cathy and Heathcliff have become infatuated with one another. Cathy has even carved the letters C + H on a wooden post. In one scene, they spy on the family’s farmhand fornicating with a farmgirl. This leads to an affair with Heathcliff himself. 

 However, Cathy gets injured while visiting the fancy home of their neighbors, a wealthy family named Linton, including the young male heir, Edgar. Edgar’s younger sister is a bit ditsy, but she enjoys Cathy’s company greatly. Cathy stays there for several weeks, which irks Heathcliff a lot. 

 Shortly, thereafter, Cathy talks with Nelly about Edgar possibly proposing marriage with Cathy. Heathcliff secretly listens to the conversation, and Nelly sees him listening but doesn’t warn Cathy. Cathy says she’ll probably agree to marry Edgar because of his wealth, but she admits to Nelly she only truly loves Heathcliff. Sadly, Heathcliff doesn’thear Cathy say she loves only him. So, he angrily steals the family’s horse and runs away. 

 Consequently, Cathy ends up marrying Edgar even though she doesn’t really love him. He treats her nicely and lovingly, however. 

 Years later, Heathcliff suddenly returns, and the uncouth young man has become a rich gentleman. His return reignites Cathy’s lust for him. They begin a secret adulterous affair, but their secret can’t last forever. 

WUTHERING HEIGHTS is sumptuously filmed. The acting, costuming and art direction are first rate. The beginning scenes of Cathy and Heathcliff becoming friends as children are beautifully done. However, eventually the filmmakers take an old fashioned love story and turns it into a crude tale of lust. WUTHERING HEIGHTS doesn’t have any explicit nudity, but it inserts many partially depicted scenes of fornication, marital sex and adultery, and some implied sex scenes. Taken individually, the scenes are not excessive, but the number or quantity of them is. Also, the filmmakers insert some weird and depraved psychological abuse in the relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy’s sister-in-law, whom Heathcliff marries after he and Cathy part ways for a second time. He does this out of revenge against Cathy and Edgar. All these scenes seem to become rather ugly and misanthropic. WUTHERING HEIGHTS also has about 15 gratuitous instances of foul language, including three anachronistic “f” words and one strong profanity. 

 MOVIEGUIDE® finds the movie’s strong Romantic worldview, multiple sex scenes and pagan hedonism ultimately abhorrent. As the Blackeyed Peas once sang, “Where is the love?”