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Verity (R)

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Cordova

Release Date: October 2, 2026

Runtime: 1 hr. 54 mins.

Genre: Drama, Romance

Struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh is hired as a ghostwriter for renowned author Verity Crawford under mysterious circumstances, but her assignment takes a dark turn after discovering chilling autobiographical notes. Faced with a series of deadly family secrets, Lowen struggles to separate fiction from reality, while also blurring the lines with Verity's husband, Jeremy.

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Review

If a book is successful enough, a movie will almost always follow. Such is the case with Colleen Hoover's #1 bestselling 2018 thriller, Verity. Unfortunately for fans of the book and even more so for those who enjoy psychological thrillers, the filmmaking team tasked with converting Hoover's story into a sub-two-hour movie botches the job. The choice of Michael Showalter, who has made exactly one good film (The Big Sick) to go along with a host of forgettable ones (and don't get me started on the wretched excuse for a cult comedy, Wet Hot American Summer), is where the problems start. (Isn't there a Brian De Palma protégé out there?) But Nick Antosca's condensation of the source material kills tension, eliminates key elements, and gives everything the bum's rush.

Although Verity was in production long before The Housemaid became an unexpected box office success, the two movies are squarely aimed at the same audience and offer similar experiences - storylines with gaping logical holes that are designed for distracted audiences and pretty much rely on viewer inattention to succeed. Both are very '80s-ish in their approach, bucking the current trend of psychological thrillers by employing nudity and not seeming to be ashamed of it. But for all its flaws - and they were numerous - at least The Housemaid was sleazy fun. Verity is something of a snoozer and considerably less "fun."

Verity starts out strongly, with an introduction to successful author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) then, after a one-year time jump, to struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson). Her contrived meeting with Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), who happens to be Verity's husband, sets things in motion. It's a singularly gory moment and the movie's most effective shock. In short order, we learn that Verity, due to severe injuries suffered in a car accident, is catatonic and unable to work. Her publishers, however, are keen for her to write three more volumes to conclude an ongoing series, so they agree to hire a co-writer. Jeremy wants Lowen and she is soon headed for the Crawfords' palatial (but secluded) estate. There, while combing through Verity's old notes, she discovers a disturbing autobiography. She also begins to wonder whether Verity is as out-of-it as she seems to be.

No one is going to mistake Hoover's novel for Steinbeck, but there is a little more going on beneath the surface than is initially apparent. Although the movie half-heartedly attempts to retain the book's ambiguity, it fails. No one attending Verity will be confused about "the truth." The filmmakers (screenwriter Nick Antosca and Showalter) stack the deck, whereas Hoover constructed two equally plausible options.

There's a commonly held phrase in storytelling that advises to "show, don't tell." In the case of Verity, the filmmakers have inverted this to "tell, don't show." Nowhere is that more evident than in a painfully trite plot device that explains everything. Despite often feeling rushed and incomplete, the movie suffers from plodding pacing. It's slow and wordy, often relying on putting written passages on screen because the filmmakers couldn't come up with a more dynamic way to provide exposition.

Of course, there's a twist. Nowadays, the conception of telling a story "straight" is deemed antiquated and anticlimactic. There's a twofold problem with how Verity approaches this, however: (1) it's dumb and illogical, and (2) it's underwhelming. Shifts in character, although necessary to the narrative's progression, are poorly motivated within the constraints of a 110-minute screen time. And a foundational plot element is nonsensical.

Although it's nice to see Josh Hartnett getting leading roles again, this rather bland character could have been played by anyone who can effectively portray a "nice guy who may have secrets." Anne Hathaway is criminally underused. Except for a few flashbacks and/or dream sequences, her title character is pretty much catatonic for the proceedings. And Dakota Johnson, despite having evolved as an actress over the course of the last decade, seems to have regressed to her Fifty Shades of Grey level of performance. She's dull and laconic and generally fails to grab the viewer's attention except during a bath scene.

Perhaps I shouldn't fall into the trap of comparing every psychological thriller to Hitchcock because that's arguably an impossible bar to reach. But a movie of this sort should retain a level of plausibility while it's unspooling, even if the whole thing falls apart upon post-movie reflection. With Verity, the manipulation is too ham-fisted to obscure the obvious fallacies, and the twist is too artificially revealed to have the desired impact. Verity the novel is an entertaining beach book. Verity the movie is an Amazon Prime throwaway.

© 2026 James Berardinelli

Synopsis

Struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh is hired as a ghostwriter for renowned author Verity Crawford under mysterious circumstances, but her assignment takes a dark turn after discovering chilling autobiographical notes. Faced with a series of deadly family secrets, Lowen struggles to separate fiction from reality, while also blurring the lines with Verity's husband, Jeremy.