Starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender. Rated PG.

Jane Eyre is no chick flick. Charlotte Brontë’s 163-year-old novel is back to remind us how kick-ass storytelling is really done, and this latest film version is so breathlessly riveting that somebody should immediately round up all the ADHD–afflicted teenage boys and beer-guzzling hockey dudes in the world and herd them to see it.

Admittedly, the moment when Mr. Rochester tells Jane “You transfix me, quite” will probably get girls feeling just a little more faint and fluttery than guys. That might have something to do with the fact that one of literature’s most wildly charismatic crush objects is played here by the wildly charismatic Michael Fassbender. Jane Eyre is nothing if not exquisitely romantic—not to mention erotic, in that suppressed Victorian sort of way. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) most cannily gets this.

If you haven’t read this gothic tale of the orphan who leaves a boarding-school life of brutal oppression to become governess at the isolated estate of the mysterious Rochester, well, you’re a lucky dog lapping up its surprises for the first time. Fukunaga and screenwriter Moira Buffini conjure gripping suspense on the misty moors—and those heart-thumping screams in the night don’t hurt either.

Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, and Sally Hawkins are all excellent in supporting roles, but the passionate soul of Jane Eyre belongs, natch, to Jane. Mia Wasikowska (of Alice in Wonderland and The Kids Are All Right) embodies Brontë’s resolute, ever-questioning heroine with such intelligence you can’t take your eyes from that furrowed brow beneath the bonnet and severely parted hair. The first witty exchanges between Jane and Rochester crackle with energy and the giddy realization that the moody master is excited by a woman who can think. We’re transfixed by that fiercely free spirit too—unflattering bun be damned.