By George & Josh Bate
Originally self-published by Colleen Hoover in 2018, Verity became a massive publishing phenomenon and a viral sensation on BookTok, to such an extent that a feature film adaptation felt inevitable. Following the success of The Housemaid, Gone Girl, and other twisty, fast-paced, pulpy domestic thrillers with significant mid-story shifts, Amazon MGM Studios teamed up with Hoover to bring Verity to the big screen and, in doing so, have created the cinematic equivalent of a twisty, silly, and disposable, yet undeniably entertaining, thriller novel you buy at an airport book store and read while you wait for your flight to take off.
From director Michael Showalter (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), Verity follows Lowen (Dakota Johnson), a struggling author given the opportunity of a lifetime when she is approached to complete a new novel in popular author Verity Crawford’s (Anne Hathaway) bestselling mystery series. Following a car accident, Verity is immobile and mute, leaving Lowen to dig through the author’s massive array of notes in order to craft the novel. While doing so, Lowen stays in the remote family home of the Crawfords, which also includes Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) and their young son Crew. As Lowen dives deeper into the mind of Verity, she uncovers disturbing secrets that set off a chain of troubling events.
Verity very much exists in the same lineage as The Housemaid and other film adaptations of popular domestic thrillers. This is by no means high brow, awards-worthy entertainment; instead, it’s a movie that knows exactly what it is. Although not as unintentionally and laugh-out-loud hilarious as The Housemaid, Showalter’s film features a hefty dose of awkward dialogue, stilted acting, and overly melodramatic moments that give way to a handful of decent chuckles. There are some moments in particular that borderline on parody, yet are made all the funnier by the seriousness with which Johnson, Hartnett, and Hathaway approach the material.
The trio of actors, all excellent performers in their own right, compete with one another for who can deliver dialogue and pull facial expressions the most unnaturally and awkwardly. It seems like a constant passing of the torch between Johnson, Hartnett, and Hathaway in this regard as all three lean completely into how camp their film is. At times, these performances foster hearty laughs, but, at others, they pull one out of the story, making it abundantly clear to the audience that these actors who are clearly not doing their finest work.
With silly laughs along the way, a fairly intriguing, albeit unremarkable mystery unfolds. After overcoming an unnecessarily lengthy set-up, the film ramps up the suspense and intrigue when Lowen moves into the family home of the Crawfords and starts digging around in Verity’s office. The narrative moves a tad too sluggishly for this kind of film and, for much of its runtime, lacks a sinister edge to effectively amplify the stakes, yet there is a somewhat mesmerizing quality to the film – an attribute that means it’s difficult to take one’s eyes off the screen.
Showalter does a serviceable job making use of the contained setting of his film. With just three performers on-screen for much of the film, one of whom hardly has any dialogue, and restricting the story to a beautiful remote home in the Vermont woods, Verity has the intimacy of classic chamber thrillers like Sleuth and Deathtrap. Showalter’s film is nowhere near as captivating nor unpredictable as these legendary films, although it nonetheless makes for simultaneously tense and cozy viewing.
After a couple of initial reveals upon Lowen coming to the Crawford’s home, Verity surprisingly lacks much momentum in its narrative for quite some time. During this stretch of the film, it becomes rather predictable what direction the story is heading in and what notes it will ultimately culminate in. Come the final stretch, much of what is forecast comes to fruition, with the exception of one reveal that, while relatively unexpected, deflates the story considerably. Without delving into spoilers, there are a few rules of thumb that mysteries should always keep in mind in order to preserve the integrity and suspense of the story, and Verity breaks one of these rules in its final act.
VERDICT: 6/10
Verity is the cinematic equivalent of a twisty, silly, and disposable, yet undeniably entertaining book you buy at an airport book store and read while you wait for your flight. Although not as unintentionally hilarious as The Housemaid, there’s plenty of awkward dialogue and stiff acting to chuckle at as a fairly intriguing mystery unfolds in director Michael Showalter’s latest film. Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, and Anne Hathaway compete unrelentingly with one another for who can deliver lines and produce facial expressions the most unnatural and awkward, which, while giving way to some hearty laughs, frequently takes one out of the film. The ultimate reveals are somewhat predictable, and one in particular deflates the narrative considerably, but there’s quite a bit of a fun to be had with a contained psychosexual thriller devoid of pretension and fully aware of just how pulpy it is.