>The film is aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive, leaning hard into Fennell’s familiar brand of stylized depravity. It diverges significantly from the novel and is a deliberately unromantic take on the source material, stripped of emotional nuance and full of salacious detours that serve shock value.

>There is hyper-sexualized imagery — far more explicit than any previous adaptation of this material. The film opens with a public hanging that quickly descends into grotesque absurdity, as the condemned man ejaculates mid-execution, sending the onlooking crowd into a kind of orgiastic frenzy. A nun fondles the corpse’s visible erection.

>Later, a woman is strapped into a horse’s reins for a BDSM-tinged encounter. There are several masturbation scenes shot in an intimate, clinical, and purposefully discomforting style. The camera lingers on suggestive textures: egg yolks running through fingers, dough being kneaded with quiet aggression, a slug sliding slowly down glass.

>Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi deliver committed performances, with great chemistry, but the characters they portray are so cold and unlikable that even strong acting can’t create a point of connection.

https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2025/8/5/emerald-fennells-wuthering-heights-gets-frosty-reception-at-first-test-screening