Verity review

VERITY: 

ANNE HATHAWAY AND DAKOTA JOHNSON ARE A GLAMOROUS TEAM-UP IN FRUSTRATING EROTIC-ISH THRILLER! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** out of 4

MGM

Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson in Verity

 

            You ever have one of those movies where the trailer does a phenomenal job getting you interested in the film only for it to be a big letdown? Yeah, that’s what I just went through when I saw Verity, an erotic psychological thriller from director Michael Showalter (Wet Hot American Summer, The Big Sick, The Eyes of Tammy Faye) based on the novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover of It Ends with Us fame.

            The trailer got my attention when I first saw it in front of, coincidentally, another 2026 Anne Hathaway movie, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and it looked like absolute madness. It didn’t say what the movie was about or who the characters are; all it showed was a steamy kiss between Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, with the latter suddenly becoming Anne Hathaway,y and all sorts of frightening things start to happen. 

            I had to know what this fucking movie was about after such an impactful trailer, and now that I’ve seen the film…I regret my life choices because it’s a major disappointment,t sadly. This is pretty low on my worst films of the year;r, it’s not Psycho Killer or Return to Silent Hill bad, and the movie starts off promising in the first half, but then it gets more and more stupid with an absolutely insulting twist ending. 

            The film follows author Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson-Fifty Shades trilogy, Black Mass, Materialists) living in New York City, struggling to find a wider audience for her work. When she’s approached by a publisher to finish a novel series from bestselling author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway-The Devil Wears Prada 1 and 2, The Dark Knight Rises, The Odyssey), who has become paralyzed and unable to move or speak after an accident, Lowen visits Verity’s home to finish the book, only to discover something terrifying is lurking in the house, and nobody believes her. 

            The film also stars Josh Hartnett (The Faculty, Sin City, The Bear) as Verity’s husband Jeremy Crawford, Ismael Cruz Córdova (The Good Wife, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) as Corey, and Irina Dvorovenko (Flesh and Bone, The Blacklist, Power) as Anna. 

            Overall, Verity has a fascinating premise, and Hathaway and Johnson work well together; unfortunately, the film completely wastes their talents and its story on tired, erotic thriller beats and one of the most insane final notes I’ve ever seen in a movie, and not in a good way. I was with the movie enough in the beginning and found a lot of it pretty gripping, but as it kept going, it started losing its momentum and became a generic erotic thriller that hits all the notes you’d expect, even right down to lame twists: one predictable and the other completely stupid and confusing.

            The biggest problem with the movie was that it was set up like it was going to be the Black Swan of writing, with Johnson slowly going insane the more she sees Hathaway,y and that’s not what it is. Most of this movie is Johnson’s character reading about Verity via an unpublished autobiography manuscript, and the majority of those chilling scenes shown in the trailer are just dream sequences or short bursts during random scenes.

            Had the film actually gone that route throughout and not get lost halfway through, I think Verity could have been great. As is, it’s one of my biggest disappointments of the year and a complete waste of the talents both in front of and behind the camera. 

            I’ll give the movie credit that, for as much as it gets wrong, Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson are good here and give strong performances. Johnson is kind of playing the everyday woman who gets roped into all this madness, a performance she has done many times before, but it works fine enough, and Hathaway is fantastic as 2 versions of Verity, the paralyzed Verity and the Verity shown in flashbacks as Johnson reads her manuscript. Hathaway perfectly captures the steaminess and mystique of a character like this. 

            Michael Showalter is a great director and has made films and shows I enjoyed immensely, but it seemed like he was out of his zone while making this, and either he or the writer didn’t fully understand what makes a steamy thriller engaging. A Simple Favor and The Housemaid are very sexy movies, but they also had brilliant storylines, compelling characters, and twists that don’t cheat the audience and feel earned. 

            This has a good setup, but no payoff, and halfway through it just becomes another one of these movies. I don’t know if the book is like this, but it clearly did not translate well to the big screen. 

            Alright, let’s talk about what I consider the worst aspect of this film: the ending, and for the sake of those curious to see the movie for themselves, I won’t spoil it. I saw one of the twists coming as I was watching it, but there is another twist that’s tacked on at the very end of the movie that makes absolutely no sense and raises so many unwanted questions about the film. 

            It’s such an insane and frustrating final note that it makes the absolute worst Shyamalan twists seem brilliant by comparison, and it’s not one of those shocking twist endings that get your blood pumping and make you  talk to your friends like, “Oh my God, what could this mean?” It’s more like the kind you give an awkward shrug to and say, “What?” I was trying to piece the ending together on my way home from the movie, and it kept falling apart the more I thought about it. 

            Verity may not be among the absolute worst movies I saw this year (The film itself is around where Digger and Practical Magic 2 are), but it certainly has the worst ending I saw this year. What starts off as a gripping and exhilarating thriller devolves into a tired, repetitive film with a tacked-on ending that feels unfulfilling, sexy, or thrilling;g this movie is not.