Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett bring the steam, and the twists will spark a lot of debate.
Verity is a guilty pleasure that knows exactly what it is, and the headline of this Verity review is that Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett make it a very good time for a very long while. Michael Showalter‘s adaptation of Colleen Hoover‘s bestselling thriller, which Amazon MGM Studios opens in theaters Friday, October 2, has a terrific cast, a gorgeous house and a delicious premise. When it eventually has to explain itself, it wobbles. Getting there is a blast.
Hoover is best known as the reigning queen of tortured romance, the author whose novels have become a publishing phenomenon and a fixture of BookTok. Verity was her detour into domestic thriller, and it is the fourth of her books to reach the screen. It is also the first to lean fully into the dark side, with a story built around a question every reader of thrillers loves: how much of what we are reading is true?
That matters, because Hoover adaptations have quickly become their own kind of event. Her readers do not just buy the books. They annotate them, debate them online, film themselves crying over the last chapters and turn up to opening weekend in groups. A Hoover movie arrives with a built-in audience that already knows every twist, and the real question is never whether it will surprise them. It is whether it will give them the experience they had on the page. Verity, for the most part, does.
Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a published but struggling novelist whose career and bank account are both running on fumes. She gets an unusual offer. Verity Crawford (Hathaway), a wildly successful author of dark, twisted bestsellers, has been left paralyzed and unable to speak after a car accident. Her publisher needs someone to finish her series, and Lowen is asked to step in as ghostwriter.
The job requires her to move into the Crawford home in snowy Vermont, a striking modernist house that feels both luxurious and quietly sinister. She will have access to Verity’s office, her notes and her drafts. She will also be living under the same roof as Verity’s grieving husband, Jeremy (Hartnett), and the film makes it fairly clear that he is part of the appeal.
Then Lowen discovers a hidden manuscript. It reads like an autobiography, or perhaps a confession, and what it describes is about as dark as fiction gets.
From that moment on, Verity becomes a game of who to believe: the woman on the page, the woman in the bed upstairs, or the man downstairs who swears he loved her.
Showalter, working from a screenplay by Nick Antosca, plays the first stretch with a sly wink, and it is a lot of fun. Gayle King, Alex Cooper and Sean Evans of Hot Ones turn up in cameos, interviewing Verity about her creative process in flashback.
Lowen spends more time lounging with her vape than writing a single word, a detail every procrastinating writer in the audience will recognize. And Showalter keeps cutting to Hathaway, motionless and gaunt, staring into the middle distance, in a way that is equal parts funny and chilling.
Hathaway is the film’s secret weapon. Seen mostly in flashbacks and in that eerie, frozen present, she creates a character who is magnetic and terrifying at the same time. She has to make us believe that Verity is capable of anything, and she does it with a smile that never quite reaches her eyes. It is a performance that leans into the camp of the material without ever condescending to it, and it is the best reason to buy a ticket.
Hartnett, who has quietly become one of the most interesting actors of his generation in his second act, brings real ache to Jeremy. He is grieving, angry, attractive and possibly dangerous, and Hartnett keeps all four in play. The chemistry between him and Johnson gives the film its steam, and the steam is a big part of the fun.
Johnson is a more divisive presence, as she often is. Her signature low, unhurried delivery is a perfect match for the film’s early comedy. Lowen insists at one point that she is not bored, she just has a resting bored face, and Johnson plays that line for everything it is worth.
Her deadpan works less well when the film finally demands some fire from the character, and there are moments in the back half when Lowen seems almost as checked out as Verity. But she is never less than watchable, and her chemistry with Hartnett carries a lot of weight.
The most interesting relationship in the film, though, is the one between Lowen and Verity, two writers who barely share a scene in the present. Lowen spends the movie inside Verity’s head, reading her words, finishing her sentences and slowly losing track of where one woman’s story ends and the other’s begins.
Johnson and Hathaway play that tension like a mirror, one passive and watchful, the other ferocious and secretive, and the film is at its most unsettling when it lets the two performances bleed into each other.
Showalter, who has spent the last decade moving from alt comedy to polished romantic dramas like The Idea of You, which also starred Hathaway, is clearly enjoying the chance to make a steamy erotic thriller.
The film has the glossy, slightly overheated feel of the genre’s heyday, and that is meant as a compliment. Hoover’s story is more interested in the idea of writing itself, in the way fiction can disguise the truth and the truth can be dressed up as fiction. When those two impulses line up, Verity is genuinely gripping.
They do not always line up, and that is where the film stumbles. The excerpts of Verity’s supposedly shocking prose that we hear on screen never quite match the reputation the movie gives her, and some readers will feel the gap. The bigger issue is the final act.
Without giving anything away, the revelations that drive the ending raise a lot of questions, and how much you enjoy them will depend on how willing you are to go along for the ride. Fans of the novel will know what is coming. Newcomers may find themselves debating the logic on the way home.
That debate may be part of the appeal. Verity belongs to a tradition of twisty, trashy thrillers that are less about airtight plotting than about the thrill of not knowing whom to trust, and it shares some DNA with Gone Girl and the gothic romances that inspired it. Like a great airport novel, it is built to be devoured, discussed and argued over, not dissected.
The craft is strong throughout. The Crawford house, all clean lines, warm wood and shadowy corners, is practically a character, and the snowbound setting gives the film a claustrophobic chill. Showalter keeps the pace brisk, and at just under two hours, Verity rarely drags.
Hoover’s enormous readership is going to show up for this one, and most of them will have a good time. It is a juicy, glossy, deliciously trashy thriller with a tremendous Anne Hathaway performance at its center. The ending will not convince everyone. The journey there is worth taking.
RATING: ★★★☆☆
That’s a Wrap | Verity
“Juicy, glossy and deliciously trashy, with a tremendous Anne Hathaway at its center.”
Jonathan P. Moustakas
Watch The Verity Trailer Below:
CREDITS
Director: Michael Showalter
Screenwriter: Nick Antosca
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett
Distributor Amazon MGM Studios
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour 57 minutes
