'BDSM-tinged' Wuthering Heights adaptation slammed for being 'aggressively provocative'

Any fans of Emily Bronte’s iconic dark romance will remember reading about the lonesome Yorkshire moors, the brooding Heathcliff and, of course, the quintessential opening scene in which a man ejaculates while being executed.

Oh, wait – that wasn’t actually in the book. But it has reportedly found its way into Emerald Fennel’shotly anticipated movie adaptation of Wuthering Heights. The film, starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, had its first screening in Dallas, Texas, and, as reported by World of the Reel, audience reactions were “largely mixed” – with some “visible restlessness” thrown in.

One viewer described the film as “aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive” and even suggested a link to the “stylised depravity” seen in Emerald’s previous big screen hit, Saltburn, which sparked discourse over its graphic sexual scenes.

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The movie reportedly opens with a public hanging in which the “condemned man ejaculates mid-execution”. This apparently sends the crowd into an orgy-like “frenzy” while a nun “fondles the corpse’s visible erection” (which does somewhat evoke Saltburn’s infamous graveyard scene).

The film goes on to portray a “BDSM-tinged” encounter, several “clinical” masturbation scenes and a splurge of "hyper-sexualised" imagery through things like running egg yolks, aggressive dough kneading and a slug close-up. Just as Bronte envisioned.

While the film isn’t set to be released in the US until February 2026, news of the test screening has spread like wildfire through BookTok – and Wuthering Heights fans aren’t too happy.

One TikToker, who said they didn’t “even feel comfortable reading [the review] out loud”, insisted that their criticism of the movie’s alleged contents wasn’t about “purity culture”. In her caption, she wrote: “It seems the Emerald Fennel’s Wuthering Heights film adaptation seems a little insecure about being able to portray how disturbing the story is subtly”.

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Commenters were largely in agreement, adding that they thought these scenes sounded “cheap” and were only added for shock value. One commenter wrote: “Wuthering Heights is not an erotic book at all. Cathy and Heathcliffe’s love is minimally sexual at best, she is doing this purely for shock factor…”

“Gothic literature was about transgression through disturbance. Bizarre and cheap attempts to generate shock is not transgression,” a second added.

It even seems to have put others off watching the movie entirely. “This is my favourite book ever…I will not be watching this movie omg…was already disappointed with the casting but this is so much worse than I imagined,” one wrote.

Others even felt she was simply trying to hold onto the “Saltburn hype”. One user said: “I swear she just saw how people reacted to Saltburn and decided to try and recreate the hype.”

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