“Wuthering Heights” Is for the TikTok Generation

Director Emerald Fennell knows how to tap into a zeitgeist. Her 2020 film Promising Young Woman captured the high that #MeToo activists were riding after the downfall of Harvey Weinstein. Her 2023 film Saltburn mirrored modern young people’s confusion over whether they want to eat the rich or be the rich. In “Wuthering Heights”, her most controversial project yet, Fennell tries to tap into the romance craze. As the current book market can attest, women can’t get enough of smutty stories about monstrous men. Instead of adapting the Brontë novel faithfully—as the quotation marks around the title indicate—Fennell has chosen to tap into that market, flattening the complex, intergenerational tale into tropes and vibes.