vangh1 reviewedFebruary 17, 2026 In a word? Agony.
I had no idea what I was getting in to. I hasn't read the book, I didn't see a trailer, I was expecting some Regency era Valentines drama. And after the opening sequence with the hanging, I realized I was wrong and I that I was apparently in for something a little bit fun and macabre. But nope, wrong again. A lot macabre, but no fun at all.
I have never been the type of person to watch a movie through the slits of my fingers, or to exclaim my feelings dramatically but I engaged in both excessively while I watched Cath and Heathcliffe engage in their mess.
Before I knew all was doomed to a toxic, infidelitous, on again-off again pas-de-deux, came the scene where Cath is in the loft, peeking at Joseph and Zilla having their kinky fun. And when Heathcliffe puts his hands over Cath's mouth and eyes, hoo boy. Such good storytelling. This intensely intimate moment in which they're so physically close and titillated by proxy but unable to act on it both in the immediate and in the long term. Such an impressive physical manifestation of their situation as a whole.
But instead I spent the whole movie gasping, sighing, and wondering, "What the fuck...?" while they ruin the lives of all around them while they try to figure out what it is they actually want. And the movie seems to think, on some level, their whole dynamic is a viable depiction of love and not the deplorable acts of traumatically unwell people who are incapable of getting out of their own way.
As the credits came up I thought it was a good thing I'd never read the book, but in what little bit I've gathered in my post-viewing reading it sounds like the book actually acknowledges the toxicity and failings of these individuals (both how the world fails them, and how they fail themselves and each other) so maybe I'd have been better off.
Why this was released on Valentine's Day, I'll never be able to reconcile.
