febuary reviewed
wake up dead man (2025), saltburn (2023), and wuthering heights (2026)
wake up dead man: a knives out mystery (2025)
Dare I say the best Knives Out film in the franchise? I think this story is a big swing for this movie franchise, and one that really payed off. It’s appropriately over the top and unbelievable, while overall functioning on different level than what we’ve seen so far.
In a lot of ways I think this film (especially in comparison to The Glass Onion) trusts its audience more than we have ever seen from the Knives Out franchise. Within our star studded cast, everyone was playing their characters absolutely straight. Trusting the viewers to get the joke and bask in the absurdity, without leaning into it so much that the performances feel like a guided laugh track.
My favourite thing about this film is the fact that it operates on a pretty dark level thematically. This really worked in terms of heightening the comedy, but also independently in its exploration of religion, religious institutions, and belief. It was sort of incredibly moving in a way I didn’t think was possible in a film like this.
Josh O’Connor played Pastor Jud in this very introspective, troubled way that on paper doesn’t sound like it would work for a whodunit, but his earnest desperation and guilt propelled the mystery in a way unparalleled to the other films in this franchise.
The film also has a great sense of place, its gorgeous sweeping shots of upstate New York ground the film’s sub-genre as a small town mystery, but with a twist. This works especially well in terms of providing a believable backdrop for the assembly the eccentric and distinctive cast of ensemble characters.
I also loved that this film wasn’t overly concerned with being unexpected. It is fairly obvious who the murderer is from the beginning, but the winding detective narrative is so compelling and there are enough side mysteries and questions about the mechanics of the murder that it doesn’t matter that you’re 99% sure you know who did it the whole time.
I find that the modern mystery plot (in any storytelling medium) is often more committed to surprising the audience than presenting a compelling and coherent mystery; so often writers forget that much of the enjoyment derived from detective narratives isn’t the shock at the end, but the audience’s ability to use the same clues presented to the characters in order to piece together the mystery for themselves.
Truly my only complaint of this film was that I wanted more of Benoit Blanc and less of Mila Kunis.
saltburn (2023)
I had to patch my knowledge of the Fennell-verse, and so decided to watch this film essentially as homework for “Wuthering Heights.”
In the beginning I was rather compelled by the idea of the Oxford novel come to screen. When Jacob Elordi’s character, Felix, references Evelyn Waugh I had a sense that I understood what this film would be, only for it to veer more the direction of The Talented Mr. Ripley. The narrative ended up feeling more rompy than anything, though even this was hindered by its stop start pacing and its predictability.
Thematically, Fennell seems to be very interested in the idea of class and paternalism in the UK, but not quite interested enough to present us with anything aside from manic pixie Jacob Elordi. I was compelled by the film’s presentation of class tensions as being more between the haves and the have mores rather than haves and have nots, and I appreciated the way it sort of turned the idea of eating the rich on its head with evil unsympathetic Oliver. Yet overall the film just doesn’t really have anything interesting to say outside of the idea that wealth and wealthy people are alluring.
I recall Saltburn getting a lot of chatter for being vulgar and grotesque when it came out, and while I found it to be medium shocking at times, it felt shocking for the sake of the shock. The intent behind any sexual encounters were really quite easy to reckon with and didn’t ever leave you with a feeling of discomfort that extended past the scene. Honestly, I think this film was most successful in being shocking and transgressive when Oliver’s weird maths friend eats a chocolate bar from the middle. That stuck with me far more than the weird vampire, eating disorder, BDSM daddy Oliver and Venetia scenes.
In terms of cinematography, the film is expansive and opulent and employs montage exceptionally well. I was however uncompelled by the choice of the 4:3 aspect ratio and felt that it didn’t really work in terms of serving the intended voyeurism effect. We simply see too much, in a very literal, bodily sense, of Oliver peering and eavesdropping to ever feel that indecent, thrilling feeling of being a fly on the wall.
In the end, I felt that this film offered up some interesting themes and characters, had no real interest in exploring them, but was very excited about aestheticising them.
“wuthering heights” (2026)
Before I get into my review of this film, I will indulgently direct you to my most niche, interesting, and positive thoughts on Emerald Fennel’s “Wuthering Heights” in the form of the following post:
I digress. On a cinematic level I felt that Fennell created a disjointed, badly paced film devoid of eroticism and Gothic-ness.
I thought the younger actors did a phenomenal job and were easily the best part of the film, but the moment Margot Robbie comes on screen with her strange, high pitched posh accent, followed by Jacob Elordi, long haired and greasy, I knew this movie was not going to succeed in suspending my disbelief.
The distinctive Yorkshire accent is replaced by each actor doing seemingly whatever the hell they want, which results in a film with no sense of place, despite the sweeping shots of the English moors. Robbie is acting for the screen, while Elordi is acting for the stage, and their performances together felt deeply disjointed.
Their romantic and sexual chemistry together is serviceable, but seriously hindered by the rather glib script they are given. For that matter, the film is pretty much entirely devoid of eroticism. There is sex, yes, but the sex isn’t particularly titillating; Fennell strips the sex of anything which could be erotic, yearning, denial, misunderstanding, any genuine emotion other than vague horniness. It is ridiculous to me that the most erotic scene in this film is a random moment in the middle of a montage between Cathy and Edgar!?1
Nelly Dean is a narratively incoherent character and I despised the fact that Fennell chose to make her the affair child of a nobleman. It doesn’t add anything to the story, and feels like a cheap attempt at pulling focus to one of the original themes present in the novel, class.
Speaking of Nelly Dean, the casting of Nelly and Edgar as the two people of colour, against a white Heathcliff, is something you can’t ignore the optics of, what a strange and offensive choice.
In terms of being an adaptation, I thought this film didn’t deliver on really any level. For an adaptation to be compelling I feel it has to do one of two things: ask an interesting (read: contentious) question about its source material; or provide an argument for a specific reading (often as a modernisation) of the source material. Fennell was clearly trying to do the former, as we know from her infamous interview where she explains that the movie she was trying to make was a sort of homage to the version of Wuthering Heights she remembers reading at 14.
The thing is, I find this to be a really compelling question to ask! What does it mean that so many women have an intense love affair with this novel, that begins with perceiving it as a romance in their teenage-hood? What about Heathcliff and Cathy speaks to teenage angst and desire and lack of autonomy?
I don’t know!
Because this film wasn’t concerned with its own question or concept at all!? More than anything, Fennell was concerned with egg yolks and horse bits and the fact that Jacob Elordi is seven feet tall.
This film is a genuinely bad adaptation of the original novel Wuthering Heights, if for no other reason than the fact that it seemed not nearly interested enough in its source material.
On a discursive level, I felt that there was not a soul (me included, in all honesty) that was going to the cinema to see this movie in a truly earnest fashion. Whether you had already made up your mind, or you were open to the film surprising you, you had come to the cinema with other peoples thoughts and opinions and discourse™ swirling around in your brain already. You were ready to see this film and get in on the chatter.
Actually walking into the theatre to see this film was one of those moments that really takes out out of your internet echo chambers and plants you firmly back into reality.
Most notably, there were three separate groups of teenage girls who were visibly frothing at the mouth to see this film, and one of them upon the film’s ending turned immediately to her friend and said, probably louder than she intended, “[gasp] Nelly! Dean! Literally someone needs to hang Nelly Dean, wtf.”
So it is safe to say that this film did have an audience, and in some ways had exactly the audience Fennell wanted it to have. It may seem here that I am jumping on the “GenZ can’t read” “Wuthering Heights is so fanfic coded (derogatory)” train, but honestly my feelings are the exact opposite.
I don’t think that it is a crime that teenage girls will have before and will continue to misunderstand Wuthering Heights, and I refuse to demean them for their interest in an intense, toxic love affair. Wuthering Heights is a famously misunderstood text, and frankly I think one of the most beautiful and transformative experiences one can have is in fact to misunderstand a text and then come back later in life to it to experience it anew.
What I do think is, if not a crime, at least a misdemeanour, is the fact that
a) teenagers are not going to misunderstand Wuthering Heights, they are going to understand perfectly“Wuthering Heights”—and it is every teenagers right to misunderstand something themselves rather then be fed something silly that talks down to them.
b) that teenage girls are being served milquetoast, incoherent sexual/romance media and being told it is good.
Wuthering Heights is a sweeping, dark, yes, romantic, novel, it deserved a modern adaptation that approached it with more care than just Margot Robbie masturbating on the moors.
ta da!
I hope you enjoyed this month’s reviews! I didn’t get around to some of the films I wanted to watch this month, specifically Sinners, but I am sure I will get to it in March!
If you’ve read this far I’ll go ahead and tell you that I also watched, and loved, two other films this month: When Harry Met Sally and Casablanca! My thoughts on both films come out on Monday in (un)cultured vol.1!!
The scene I am referring to is when Cathy pulls Edgar’s hands over her eyes and mouth while they are having sex. That felt sexually charged and pregnant (pardon my pun) with desire and denial and frustration.