‘Verity’ Review: A Glossy Thriller That Can’t Decide How Trashy It Wants To Be

‘Verity’ arrives as the latest Colleen Hoover novel to get the big screen treatment, this time from Amazon MGM Studios with Michael Showalter in the director’s chair. Nick Antosca adapted the book, and the cast is headlined by Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett. On paper it is a very easy sell for anyone who likes their suspense dressed up in expensive knitwear.

Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer who gets a surprisingly bloody introduction to Jeremy Crawford, played by Hartnett, after a cyclist is hit by a car. Jeremy’s wife is the bestselling author Verity, played by Hathaway, and she is now bedridden and unable to finish her popular series. Lowen is hired to complete the books and moves into the isolated Crawford home, where she stumbles on a hidden manuscript that reads like a confession to murder.

That setup should be a runaway train, and for a stretch the film looks the part. The house is all cold luxury and shadowy corridors, the kind of place where everyone seems guilty simply for standing in a doorway. But the pace is the first real problem, because the story takes so long to build any heat that I caught myself checking how much of the runtime remained.

Hathaway is the reason to stay in your seat. She understands exactly what kind of movie she is in, and she leans into the pulpy, sultry register with a wicked glint that the rest of the production only occasionally matches. Even when she is confined to a bed or wheelchair, she has a magnetism that makes every scene around her feel a little more alive.

Johnson has a tougher assignment, and the performance often feels guarded and distant when the story asks for real fear or desire. Hartnett fares better in the film’s more heightened moments, bringing a brooding stillness that suits Jeremy’s murky motives. Their chemistry never quite catches fire, which matters in a story built on obsession.

The larger issue is tonal confusion. ‘Verity’ clearly wants to channel the overheated erotic thrillers of the 1990s, yet Showalter keeps pulling back from the full madness that approach demands. When the movie finally lets a dream sequence tangle sex, blood and nightmare imagery together, it comes alive in a way the rest rarely does, and I wanted far more of that.

The twists, when they arrive, are loud and gleefully outrageous, and some of them made me laugh in exactly the wrong places. A few revelations raise more questions than they answer, and the ending lands with more of a shrug than a gasp. Still, there is a compulsive quality to the whole thing, and it is hard to fully write off a film this willing to be ridiculous.

I came away entertained in fits and starts, but frustrated that a movie with this much talent and this much style kept playing it safe. Hathaway nearly single handedly keeps the manuscript turning, and a handful of deliciously unhinged moments hint at the film it could have been. My verdict is 6 out of 10.

Did ‘Verity’ work for you as a slick guilty pleasure, or did it fumble its own twisted potential, so tell me in the comments whether you agree with my verdict.