TL;DR: Verity boasts a great gothic hook, a strong cast and gorgeous production design, but uneven direction, sluggish pacing and muddled twists drain the life out of Colleen Hoover’s darkest story. It’s for curious fans only.
Hollywood has spent the last couple of years mining Colleen Hoover’s bibliography like it’s a loot-rich dungeon, and the numbers explain why. It Ends With Us, Regretting You and Reminders of Him have together earned more than half a billion dollars, so a fourth trip back to the Hoover well was inevitable. Verity should have been the one that finally won over the skeptics, because it’s her gothic psychological thriller rather than another tearjerker built around grief and second chances. It has a haunted house premise, an unreliable narrator and a central mystery designed to make book clubs argue until midnight. Instead, this Verity movie review ends up being the story of a genuinely juicy hook getting smothered under expensive blankets.
Michael Showalter directs from a screenplay by Nick Antosca, with Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett leading an Amazon MGM Studios production that runs just under two hours. On paper, that’s a very promising lineup, especially with Antosca’s background in unsettling horror television. In practice, the film never figures out whether it wants to be a sleek erotic thriller, a camp melodrama or a slow-burn mystery. It tries to be all three and ends up committing to none of them. For a story that’s supposed to grip you by the throat, Verity mostly just taps you politely on the shoulder.
The Verity story has a killer premise buried in a lake house
Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a novelist with critical respect but not much in the way of sales, who gets an offer she can’t really afford to refuse. Verity Crawford (Hathaway), a hugely successful thriller author, was left paralysed and unable to speak after a car crash, leaving her bestselling series unfinished. Her publishers want someone to complete it, and her husband Jeremy (Hartnett) ends up bringing Lowen into the family’s lakeside home to work through Verity’s notes. The household is already carrying unbearable tragedy, including the loss of a young daughter, which makes Lowen’s arrival feel intrusive from the first night. Then she finds a hidden manuscript, apparently Verity’s private memoir, and the story Verity tells about her marriage and motherhood doesn’t line up with Jeremy’s version.
As a gamer, I couldn’t stop thinking about Alan Wake while mulling over this setup. A writer, a remote lake, and manuscript pages that reveal something darker than anyone wants to admit is prime territory for creeping dread. There’s also a delicious inversion of Stephen King’s Misery here, with the bedridden author becoming the object of fear rather than the captive. Hathaway delivers the memoir sections in heightened voiceover, which should give the film a second, poisonous voice fighting for control of the narrative. The raw ingredients for a nasty little puzzle box are all present, and that’s exactly why the execution is so frustrating.
Michael Showalter’s comedy instincts clash with the thriller genre
Showalter has real strengths, from The Big Sick to the breezy romance of The Idea of You, but those films thrive on warmth, timing and characters who feel like people. Verity requires almost the opposite skill set: menace, control, and the confidence to push absurd material straight-faced until it becomes irresistible. The film’s tone lurches between solemn eroticism and full-blown melodrama without ever landing the balance, and that’s fatal for this genre. When a thriller is this heightened, it needs either total conviction or a knowing wink, and Verity has neither. As a result, some of its biggest dramatic moments land as unintended comedy, which is the worst possible outcome for a mystery that relies on tension.
Pacing is the other big problem. The film takes well over an hour to genuinely heat up, spending much of that time on luxurious winter interiors and Lowen tiptoeing around the house. When the revelations finally arrive, they are layered and second-guessed so many times that the payoff feels muffled rather than shocking. Gone Girl proved that twist-heavy domestic thrillers can be enormously entertaining when every reveal recontextualises the characters in a meaningful way. Here, the twists feel more like a menu of possibilities than a satisfying answer. The intimate scenes, meant to supply heat and danger, feel stiff and oddly clinical rather than seductive.
Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett deserve a sharper script
Johnson’s detached, drily ironic presence can be a secret weapon in the right material, and there are moments where Lowen’s weary self-awareness gives the film a spark of personality. Unfortunately, the script rarely gives her enough interiority, so her curiosity and choices often feel dictated by plot rather than character. The opening encounter between Lowen and Jeremy is a perfect example, as it grabs attention with its shock value but asks us to accept behaviour that no functioning human would treat as normal. That immediate credibility gap follows the film throughout, making it hard to invest in whether anyone is lying. When you don’t believe the people, you stop caring about their secrets.
Hathaway is also a producer on the film, which makes it even stranger that her role feels so restrictive. The character’s condition limits her physical performance, and the voiceover sections lean toward a mannered, arch delivery that keeps Verity at an icy distance. That distance could have been haunting, but it mostly feels flat because the film never makes her a vivid presence in the house. Hartnett is stuck playing a man who must seem charming, grieving and possibly dangerous all at once, and the screenplay never sharpens those contradictions into anything compelling.
Stylish production design and a moody score can’t fake suspense
In fairness, Verity looks expensive. Amy Williams’ production design turns the Crawford home into a gorgeous, chilly showroom of wealth and isolation, while Jim Frohna’s camerawork gives the lake house plenty of polished atmosphere. Volker Bertelmann’s score reaches for classic thriller strings and old-school Hollywood unease, and it occasionally does more heavy lifting than the story itself. The problem is that craftsmanship can create mood, but it cannot manufacture dread without strong storytelling underneath. Even Jay Cassidy’s editing can’t make the 117-minute runtime feel lean when the narrative keeps treading water.
Verdict
Verity has the most cinematic premise of any Colleen Hoover adaptation so far, with an unreliable narrator, a gothic setting and a mystery that should have made for gloriously trashy fun. Its production values are strong, Bertelmann’s score adds atmosphere, and Dakota Johnson occasionally finds the right note of wry detachment. The film is undone by an uncertain tone, sluggish pacing, over-complicated twists and performances that feel stranded by the script. Devoted Hoover readers curious to see the book on screen may find enough to justify a watch, but thriller fans hoping for the next great domestic mystery should keep their expectations very low. This is a stylish shell of a thriller with far too little blood pumping through it.
