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The hall monitors on Twitter have declared writer-director Emerald Fennell their new adversary after her first two feature films and heading into her adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. For better or for worse Fennell has established herself as a force to be reckoned with, and regardless of the quality of "Wuthering Heights," the movie is projected to do strong business on the well-positioned release over Valentine's Day weekend. In other words, Fennell is here to stay.

Fennell, an actor turned director, came out of the gate swinging with 2020's bold "Promising Young Woman," which garnered her an Oscar nomination for Best Director and won her a coveted golden statue for her screenplay (the movie was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress for its lead Carey Mulligan). She followed "Promising Young Woman" up with "Saltburn," a movie that proved to be even more divisive. (Note: "Saltburn" is an absolute hoot. Good trash is an important sector of cinema.)

The scope and scale of "Wuthering Heights" shows Fennell's growth as a filmmaker, but it's her least interesting movie to date. In "Promising Young Woman," she walked the tightrope of making a movie about a heavy and devastating subject matter while finding humor within such a dark topic. "Saltburn" was a shallow tale of class that made up for its surface-level themes with wildly entertaining moments of characters behaving badly. In some ways, "Wuthering Heights" feels like the sensibilities from her previous work have fused together in a gorgeously made but wildly passionless outing.

Whether Brontë's work was read by way of an English syllabus or for pleasure, or for viewers going into the movie uneducated on the source material (sheepishly raises hand), it's clear from the outset that this is not your English professor's "Wuthering Heights." The movie opens with young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) and young Heathcliffe (Owen Cooper, the 15-year-old actor who recently won an Emmy for Netflix's Adolescence) forming a friendship and bond. They carry that forward as adults (played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi), but Cathy begins to realize she and Heathcliff couldn't be more different.

There's always been a bit of a push-and-pull between Cathy and Heathcliff but when Heathcliff overhears Cathy's conversation with housemaid Nelly (Hong Chau, a quiet force in the movie), he disappears to reinvent himself. In the meantime, Cathy marries Edgar (Shazad Latif), but she has the hardest time shaking the idea of Heathcliff from her mind.

Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" then positions itself as a power play of sorts, with Cathy and Heathcliff trying to make each other realize what they are missing out on. Through Fennell's lens, the movie becomes "Fifty Shades of Grey" with a dash of Brontë, which on paper sounds fun and sexy, but as a movie it plays rather stagnantly. As a viewer it's easy to get caught up in the windswept hills and the beautifully photographed rainstorms, or entranced by Jacqueline Durran's costumes; it's just a shame the movie is a bore.

Elordi (currently Oscar-nominated for "Frankenstein") and Robbie are two attractive movie stars, but "Wuthering Heights" should be carried by their passion, and there isn't a spark to sustain its 140-minute runtime. Their performances play like exaggerated types, with a heavy emphasis on Heathcliff's brooding persona. It all falls flat underneath the pretty surface.

There is a lot of curiosity and skepticism surrounding "Wuthering Heights," which alone will drive box office sales over its opening weekend. Whether audiences arrive at the movies with deep knowledge of Brontë's work, or having flipped through the Sparks Notes just to be able to write that paper in high school, "Wuthering Heights" will spark some discussion. It may elicit a few yawns as well.