VERITY Review: Erotic Thriller Pays Lots of Attention to Teeth, but Forgoes Having Its Own

Verity, the latest adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling prose, has two great elements in it.

First is that wonderful meet-cute when Dakota Johnson’s Lowen meets Josh Hartnett’s Jeremy while being solidly covered in blood.

The second one is that if you love it when you exit the screening with no thoughts or emotions other than a shrugging “well, that happened”, boy, do the authors of Verity have a treat for you.

After that fated collision, Lowen, a published but not very well-known writer, goes into a meeting where Jeremy also serendipitously shows up. Turns out, his full name is Jeremy Crawford, and he is the husband of Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), a famous author of messed-up thrillers. While it is public knowledge that one of Crawford’s children died a year ago in a canoe accident, what no one knows is that Verity apparently had an accident of her own, leaving her unable to deliver the last three books in her bestselling series.

Lowen is hired as a more-or-less ghostwriter and goes to stay at the couple’s Vermont house by the lake to go through Verity’s notes. There, Lowen promptly discovers that Verity is now in a catatonic state, unable to move or talk, and then stumbles across a secret manuscript of what appears to be Verity’s autobiography, where she reveals some dark secrets about her life with Jeremy.

Even if you haven’t read Hoover’s eponymous novel, you still kind of know the rest. There’s a growing attraction between Lowen and the slightly brooding master of the house, and an unspoken implication that she equally desires Verity – not so much her body, but her life in general. It’s a bit of Daphne du Maurier and Hitchcock, a bit of Charlotte Brontë, and quite a lot of the 90s erotic thriller vibes (yet none of their energy). Another reference that is bound to come to mind is last year’s breakout hit, The Housemaid, also based on a bestselling domestic thriller novel, this one by Freida McFadden.

The notable difference between the two comes from the fact that the authors of The Housemaid, both the novel and the film, are well aware of the pulpy nature of the material in their hands and own it proudly. Verity, starting with Hoover’s original text, strives to dive into deeper waters, but isn’t entirely sure how to get there. So, we have two central characters, both of whom are professional storytellers able to create their own realities with their minds, yet all we get out of this setup are some stilted inner monologues voiced by Hathaway and Johnson.

The script, written by Nick Antosca, known primarily for his TV-series work (Cape Fear, Candy), doesn’t do the already flawed original any favors, cornering the protagonist into either reading countless pages with a worried expression or walking the hallways with, you guessed it, the same worried expression. As ironic as it may sound, there just isn’t much of a plot here. We simply trudge through random scenes towards several inevitable revelations in the end, one of which doesn’t happen at the midpoint only because a) Lowen appears to be a slow reader and b) at some point, she decides to drop Verity’s manuscript altogether.

For a film that struggles to find its own core, it’s only logical that it also has difficulty with clear direction or maintaining any sort of coherent tone. Director Michael Showalter, known for working with pretty different material (The Big Sick, Spoiler Alert, The Idea of You), doesn’t seem to grasp what everyone has gathered here for either. Is it supposed to be sexy? Should it feel dangerous or dramatic? And so, Verity switches between numerous but timid sex scenes (mostly it’s close-ups of heavily panting people) and moments of unintended hilarity.

And then, there is the central trio of characters and the actors tasked with portraying them. With stories like this, there is an argument for every crucial performance to always leave room for flipping a switch, in case a twist reveals someone keeping a bunch of skeletons in their basement. In Josh Hartnett’s case, there’s plenty of room for that. But the problem is that the script forgoes giving him any personality at all, beyond Jeremy incessantly asking Dakota Johnson in every scene they share if she’s hungry and feeding her. I want to say that doesn’t happen in the sex scene, but yes, it does.

Johnson seems to adopt a similar approach, mixed with her trademark passive intoning and muttering style of line delivery, which just seems forced and inorganic here. Anne Hathaway seems to be the only one who's openly having fun with her (admittedly juicier) role, as she continues to have a great cinematic year, especially when it comes to roles of women in complicated romantic arrangements. But this only further proves the futility of the existence of a film like Verity: If you wish to see a really unhinged Hathaway, there is an infinitely better movie out there where she expertly shoots up dinosaurs.

The film opens Friday, October 2, only in movie theaters, via Amazon MGM Studios. Visit their official site for locations and showtimes.