PLOT: Lowen Ashleigh, hired to ghostwrite for Verity Crawford, uncovers what appears to be Verity’s autobiographical notes. She wrestles with the confessions about Verity’s husband and finds separating fiction from reality challenging
REVIEW: There’s something about Colleen Hoover adaptations that seems to connect with female audiences. Despite their often middling reviews, these films tend to bring in a decent amount of money, and there’s a pretty fervent fanbase. As someone who has had to review every Hoover adaptation since It Ends With Us, these opening night screenings are packed. I can’t say that I get it, though I’m far from the intended demographic. But with this latest entry going a very dark and twisted route, with a ton of talent in front of and behind the camera, I actually found myself intrigued by Hoover’s latest, aptly titled Verity.
Verity follows Lowen (Dakota Johnson), and she’s hired to ghostwrite for famous author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), who has found herself in a near catatonic state after an accident. But things get even more complicated when she finds herself getting romantically involved with Verity’s husband, Jeremy (Josh Harnett). As expected for an erotic thriller, there are plenty of twists and turns along the way, and some sexy times for good measure.
Much of the narrative is framed around Lowen reading what appears to be Verity’s autobiography. It’s filled with disturbing content that any sane person would be reading immediately; especially since it’s a pretty small stack of papers, all double spaced. Can knock that out in a couple of hours. Instead, Lowen opts for the “read a page at a time” approach so that things aren’t revealed too soon. This wouldn’t be a problem in any other narrative, but Lowen is supposed to be researching Verity. It’s literally her job. So delaying it makes sense for dramatic beats, but makes her look like such an idiot.
It’s ironic that Hathaway is the one that’s catatonic in the film because Dakota Johnson is sleepwalking through her performance. I’m sure the blandness works well for audience members looking to project themselves onto her, but I just found her one-dimensional and boring. She always plays the same role and it’s starting to wear thin. Meanwhile Hathaway chews every bit of scenery during some moments, and grounds the character when needed. If anything, the nature of the story underutilizes a fantastic actress.
I’ve always been a fan of Josh Hartnett and he’s charming enough as Jeremy, even if there’s always something a tad suspicious about him. He and Johnson don’t have much chemistry, and the trailers overplay the sensuality. Sadly, the sex scenes are lame and uninspired. Outside of some bathtub diddling, it would have all fit in a PG-13 movie.
I was most intrigued with Michael Showalter getting into the director’s chair for this, as despite his comedic leanings, he’s also taken up some fairly unexpected non-comedy fare with films like The Idea of You and Spoiler Alert. But he doesn’t bring the story to life in a very exciting way and I found myself very bored throughout. There’s easily ten minutes that could have been trimmed. It doesn’t help that the overdramatic thriller music can make for some unintentionally funny moments.
I can’t speak to how faithful the movie is to the book, but it manages to be exactly what I expected. It’s filled with ludicrous backstory, completely insane characters, and a twist that is both predictable and hardly even a twist at all. The scares are cheap, like Crew biting down on a knife when eating peanut butter. There’s not even an incident that causes it, he just randomly bites down for a jump scare. That’s not horror, that’s laziness.
I was hoping that screenwriter Nick Antosca would be able to transform some of Hoover’s more insane dialogue into something a bit more palatable. But that’s probably asking too much. I knew it was going to be rough the moment someone violently dies in front of Lowen on her way to a meeting. Then my fears were confirmed when that moment never comes back around and was ultimately just a random scare. As much as this film wants to be a thriller, it doesn’t ever seem to understand what that entails.
Unsurprisingly, Verity is yet another Hoover adaptation that misses the mark and highlights her storytelling weaknesses. Showalter is unable to bring much energy to this erotic thriller and it feels entirely dependent on the star power and charisma of its leads. I miss the erotic thrillers of the 90s but there was a simplicity to them that this film often avoids in favor of absurd story beats.
Verity is playing in theaters on October 2nd, 2026.
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