Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett walk into a gorgeous glass house with a killer view and a dead-serious case of the creeps in Verity, the new mystery-thriller from director Michael Showalter that lands in theaters today. On paper, this thing is a dream: three movie stars, a bestseller's worth of twisted source material, and a director best known for making audiences laugh until they cry. In practice, according to early takes, it's a glossy slog - a thriller that keeps striking poses but never quite draws blood.
Adapted from Colleen Hoover's smash-hit novel, Verity casts Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling ghostwriter who gets the career lifeline of a lifetime when Jeremy Crawford (Hartnett) hires her to finish the book series his wife can no longer write. That wife is Verity Crawford (Hathaway), a mega-successful author left unable to work after an accident. The catch, of course, is that Lowen has to move into the Crawfords' home to dig through Verity's notes - and once she's inside, the notes start digging back.
A House Full of Secrets and a Manuscript Full of Red Flags
The premise is pure pulp in the best sense: a stranger in a strange house, a glamorous couple with a cracked foundation, and a manuscript that reads less like fiction and more like a confession. Lowen settles in, starts sorting through Verity's pages, and gradually stumbles onto disturbing truths about the woman she's been hired to imitate. The film clocks in at 117 minutes, which is plenty of time to build dread - if the dread actually builds.
The cast is stacked well beyond its three leads. Brady Wagner plays Crew Crawford, with Ismael Cruz Cordova as Corey, Irina Dvorovenko as Anna, Sienna Kulovitz as Harper Crawford, and K.K. Moggie as Amanda Thomas rounding out the ensemble. It's the kind of supporting lineup that suggests everyone involved expected to be making something sharp and nasty.
The Stars Are Game, but the Movie Isn't
Hathaway has spent the last few years gleefully torching her own nice-girl image, and Verity sounds like another swing at playing someone unhinged and unbothered by it. Johnson, meanwhile, has built a career on playing women who sense something is off and walk toward it anyway, which makes her a natural for a ghostwriter who can't stop snooping. Hartnett has quietly become one of the most interesting middle-aged movie stars working, a guy who can play charming and menacing in the same breath.
So why doesn't it come together? The complaint, from reviewers so far, isn't that the movie lacks talent - it's that the material underneath the talent is thin. The mystery, the accusation goes, is a dumb one: the kind of plot that mistakes a twist for a point, and atmosphere for substance. When a thriller's characters spend two hours slinking around corners and trading loaded glances, the audience needs a payoff worth all that slinking. This one, apparently, doesn't stick the landing.
Where It Lands With Audiences
Here's the wrinkle: viewers don't seem to be holding a grudge. The film currently sits at a healthy 7.7 out of 10 on TMDb, which suggests that the built-in audience for Hoover's novel - a massive one - is getting what it came for. That's the strange split you see a lot with book-to-screen thrillers. Critics want coherence and craft; fans want the scenes they underlined in the paperback, brought to life by faces they like. Verity appears to be delivering the second thing and fumbling the first.
That's not nothing. A 7.7 from users is a real signal, especially in a genre where audiences and critics routinely live on different planets. And there's genuine curiosity value in watching Showalter - the guy behind The Eyes of Tammy Faye and a long run of smart comedies - try his hand at a straight-faced domestic thriller. Even a misfire from an interesting filmmaker tells you something.
The bigger question is what this means for the ever-expanding Hoover cinematic universe. Her novels have become a cottage industry, and Verity was supposed to be one of the crown jewels - a darker, nastier departure from the emotional romance that made her a household name.
Whether you're a devoted reader or just someone who likes watching beautiful people be terrible to each other in a well-lit house, Verity is in theaters now. Just maybe lower your expectations from "taut psychological thriller" to "guilty-pleasure TV movie with an A-list budget." Sometimes that's enough.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
