Movie Review: "Verity" Ends The Year of Hathaway with a Whimper
Image courtesy of Amazon MGM
3/12 For Reel Score, 1.5/5 Stars
Verity, based on the 2018 novel by author Colleen Hoover, is the latest in what seems to be a never ending stream of book to film adaptations from Hoover’s novels. I confess this is my first experience with her work, having not engaged with the previous films whatsoever. Family members that have read the novel have told me in passing that this one had more horror genre elements. Now having seen the film I have found that it is “Baby’s First Thriller.” It is quite baffling that Verity masquerades as something similar to Gone Girl or The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. It never quite reaches that level of camp because this is directed by Michael Showalter (The Idea of You, Hello, My Name is Dorris). Showalter and writer Nick Antosca seem to be reaching for a Verhoeven-esque tone that really falls flat on its face the more you unpack it. I really wasn’t a fan of this film’s faux gothic vibe.
The film follows writer Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), who is asked to assist famous author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) finish her next novel by her husband Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett) after Verity has suffered an accident that has left her a quadriplegic. Lowen takes the job and discovers a manuscript in Verity’s office that may have deadly implications. I have to say I’m a really big fan of Dakota Johnson and I think she might be the only actor here who knows the kind of movie she’s in. Her performance was a real highlight for me. With this being the final entry in the year of 6 Anne Hathaway outings, I hate to report this is my least favorite performance. Rosamund Pike already did everything Hathaway is trying to do in this film miles better in Gone Girl 12 years ago. I was really interested in the casting of Josh Hartnett especially after his more recent resurgence in films like Trap, but his performance here is borderline laughable, doing something with a pair of glasses mid scene that had me silently chuckling during the screening.
There’s a scene early in the film where Dakota Johnson’s character Lowen says she doesn’t like to read novels you can buy in airports, and I find that line particularly funny as that pretty much sums up the quality of this film. There are a couple saving graces with one needle drop making me sit up in my chair but I found a lot of the twists and turns it takes to be comically bad, with one final blow meant to restructure how you look at the film that just feels like too little too late. It seems to prefer having appearances from Sean Evans from the YouTube series Hot Ones. I’ll also acknowledge that I’m not necessarily the target audience for this as evidenced by the promo screening I saw this at, so I’m sure the BookTok crowd is going to absolutely eat this up.