We all know how the saying goes, there’s a first time for everything. For this film critic, Verity is officially my first ever delve into the world of Colleen Hoover film adaptations. Yes, Verity is yet another adaptation of a Hoover novel following the recent string of them chasing after the whopping $350 million It Ends With Us vacuumed up back in August of 2024. All of the adaptations thus far have heavily leaned into varying degrees of romantic melodrama but Verity is the first of the film adaptations thus far to fully lean into genres of mystery and erotic thrillers. Director Michael Showalter and writer Nick Antosca are essentially trying to invoke a dollar store version of Gone Girl or classic Hitchcock, leaning full into the knowledge of working with such absurdly nonsensical material from a narrative perspective.
The problem with Verity is that nearly every aspect of it is unable to commit to what it wants to deliver even from a “lets just have fun with how stupid this all is” basis. The erotic sensibilities are there but always feel a bit toned down from where they should be. Worst of all, much of the tone is played so deathly serious, that the film rides in an awkward in between of full on smut filled trash and actual dark natured thrills and its not successful at either register. At the very least, Anne Hathaway is fully on the wavelength of the half-baked steamy thrills that Verity attempts to channel, but the film largely remains a flat and uninspired venture that can’t even use the ridiculousness of its convoluted mystery as an advantage.
After an intro interview getting us familiar with the famed acclaim of mystery novelist Verity Crawford (Hathaway) we’re introduced to an author within the same genre, Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) whose career, on the other hand, is struggling with people not even giving her much dignity during book readings. As Lowen laments through voiceover about how life in a huge city like New York is the best for her, everything surrounding her begins to take immediate shifts after witnessing a bloody car accident on the road right in front of her. Another bystander, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) helps Lowen get cleaned up in a bathroom nearby. At a meeting later that day that her publisher (Ismael Cruz Córdova) sets up for her, Lowen realizes Jeremy partially set this mysterious job up for her.
What’s the gig? Jeremy wants Lowen to ghost write for his wife’s next novel in The Nobel Virtues series and of course, Jeremy’s wife and the author just so happen to be Verity who can’t write due to being rendered completely immobile from a car accident. Lowen takes the gig, despite her reservations about being able to emulate Verity’s antagonist-centric writing and moves to the couple’s home in Vermont to begin writing. As she writes, and researches by reading through Verity’s previous novels, she comes across a hard drive with Verity’s unseen manuscript for an autobiography found within it. As she reads it throughout the film, she discovers darker truths behind Verity and Jeremy’s past and the longer she stays at the Crawford’s home the more she starts to think Verity isn’t as stationary as she seems.
To Verity’s credit, there are a handful of moments where it satisfies enough of the psycho-sexual, campy, self aware trash that it aspires to be and that’s basically any moment where Anne Hathaway is chewing the scenery. It’s truly a testament to the wide array of performances that she’s had within this year alone that even with what’s easily the weakest film, she still comes away as a huge highlight. Since she’s immobile throughout, much of Verity’s presence is that of a ghost, her smooth and velvety lines echo through Lowen’s mind as she delves deeper into the psyche of who she is and her swaying relationship with Jeremy and their children.
Hathaway manages to carry a lingering sensation of unease about the truth of it all that festers within both the audience and Lowen. The film utilizes split diopter shots and dissolves in such a fun way while Lowen reads, intertwining provocative words on the page with the way the film sees them that acts as virtually the only style the film has often placed side by side with Verity doing interviews on Hot Ones or podcast like Call Her Daddy.
Unfortunately any second that Hathaway isn’t present in some way (and her sequences aren’t exactly perfection either) is where virtually everything grinds to a complete halt and Verity begins to feel like the flattest and most unsurprising executed version of what it aspires to be. Many will likely draw comparisons to The Housemaid in nature which is fair considering aside from a couple obvious differences, the template of their narratives do operate similarly, but they also both have a similar problem.
Aside from the occasional awkwardly implemented jump scare in its framework, Verity wants you to sit in a slow burn of its erotic tensions but frankly, the film isn’t horny or exciting enough to make up for so much dead air throughout the runtime even when revealing its full hand in the final twist towards its conclusion. Even The Housemaid, for all its issues, at least got a bit wild with it near its third act and an extra notch or two of energy is sorely missing from Verity’s overall vibe. As for Johnson and Hartnett, they do the best with the convoluted material given but whether it’s in the performance or direction, neither of the actors really feel like they’re at one with the assignment here. It doesn’t help that the vast majority of the runtime is spent with their robotic dialogue that’s not even humorous in an unintentional way.
There’s a slight irony to the fact that a film revolving around an author who writes books made for airport paperback is also a movie best entailed for an airplane viewing experience, and in all fairness, the wine moms Verity was made for are the most likely to ride along with its nonsense, but there exist little else to enjoy in Verity. It’s an erotic film that aside from the few bite marks on wooden bed frames doesn’t invoke much sensuality and it’s a campy thriller that never pushes as far as it should into the absurdities of its mystery and melodrama it is so self aware of. Hathaway is devilishly fun in almost every scene she’s in, but with nothing else rising to her level here, Verity’s is, more often than not, more dourly damp than delightfully camp.
Grade: C-
Verity is now in theaters.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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