Verity
Dir: Micheal Showalter. Written by Nick Antosca, based on the book by Colleen Hoover
Reviewed by Jeremy Elwood
Based on the 2018 novel by Colleen Hoover, Verity tells the story of struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) being hired to complete the bestselling work of Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) by Crawford’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett).
I haven’t read the book, but a quick scan of reviews show it was…divisive. Fans loved the pacing and plot; critics derided the prose and personalities. For both groups, it sounds like this movie is at least true to the source material.
The premise is well-trodden territory, going back to classics Jane Eyre and Rebecca – woman moves into an enigmatic man’s house and life, and finds herself neck deep in a mystery centred around his wife. It’s fleshed out with a handful of jump scares, a dash of blood and a well-built level of tension, putting it squarely in line with any number of streaming mini-series, a format in which this story would likely have been a better fit.
Director Micheal Showalter (The Big Sick) keeps things moving along deftly, at least once we get out of a long-winded setup and into the main location, a fantastic lakeside house ostensibly in Vermont. It’s a location scout’s dream, all unusual angles and sweeping views, featuring kitsch sunken conversation pits, natural stone outcroppings and modern living areas. At first, it felt as if Showalter was so pleased with his set that he was lingering on it too often, but I suspect he simply worked out the house had far more character than anyone else in the script.
For the first of Verity’s two big problems is that, for a story about writers, the characters are so thin and predictable that I stopped caring about what happens to them roughly thirty seconds after meeting each one.
Verity Crawford is a glamourous woman who writes dark, disturbing thrillers from the villain’s point of view. We know this because every other character tells us about it, repeatedly.
In what has officially now become the Year of Anne Hathaway – seriously, is there a recent release that she isn’t in? – her work here is mostly done either in flashbacks, or a voiceover which often sounds as if she literally phoned it in whilst in-between takes on one of the other, better, films she was working on at the time.
Her husband Jeremy is played by Josh Harnett in a familiar “man-next-door who might-be-more” mode. I’m assuming Jon Hamm wasn’t available, or within their budget, because this is the kind of role he seems to have cornered the market in, but Harnett is fine, given how little he’s given to work with.
Most frustrating of all is Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh. Her character arc is a flat line. Running the short gamut from aloof to disengaged, she reacts to even the most shocking of events by briefly covering her face and then carrying on as if nothing ever happened. If you mainly know Johnson as an actor who ill-advisedly thought she could help elevate the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, unfortunately, this will do nothing to change your mind.
I suspect that’s precisely the audience this is aimed at, though. The sex is plentiful, to the point of it being truly tedious; if you’re planning on seeing this in a cinema and need to know when to take a bathroom break – as soon as anyone starts looking frisky, go for it. And like those novels, Verity’s second issue is that it takes itself so very, very seriously. Any humour is entirely unintentional – a couple of lines of dialogue are so bad, and badly placed, they would have worked wonderfully as satire, but that would be giving the script far more credit than it deserves.
None of this makes it an entirely bad film. It’s well directed, looks nice, and moves along at a reasonably satisfying pace (at least once everyone’s put their clothes back on). For fans of the novel, I doubt this will disappoint, and it will cheerfully fill the gap in your streaming diary before the next Harlan Coben or Liane Moriarty series drops. But for an erotic thriller, it just isn’t particularly erotic, or thrilling. Save your ticket money and spend it on an actual book.