'Verity' Review
Release Date: 10/02/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Crime. Drama. Mystery. Romance. Thriller.
MPAA: Rated R.
Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios.
The Verdict: A Maybe
Colleen Hoover has had adaptations of her work appear rapidly over the last several years, starting with It Ends With Us and continuing with Michael Showalter’s Verity. As a relatively new fan of her work, not having read her novels but having experienced all four of the adaptations thus far, I found Verity to be a genuinely gripping tale of suspense and easily Hoover's most divisive yet.
Leaving traditional drama and romance behind for a much more sinister plot, Verity delivers plenty of twists and turns that’ll leave you guessing which draft the film will end with. Showalter, known for absurd, surreal comedies, has his second collaboration with Anne Hathaway, and this is unlike anything he’s crafted before - taking a similar path to Paul Feig, who made such mysterious thrillers as A Simple Favor and The Housemaid after years in pure comedy. In fact, the two aforementioned Feig titles share numerous similarities with Verity. Still, the genre as a whole has laid the groundwork for this pick-your-own adventure of murder, sabotage, and sex.
The story follows Dakota Johnson’s Lowen, a published author who hasn’t made a big splash, who gets the opportunity to ghostwrite for Verity Crawford, a giant name in the industry. Verity, played by Anne Hathaway, can't speak or walk after an accident, and as her condition is hidden from the public, Josh Hartnett’s Jeremy offers Lowen a place to stay. At the same time, she works on Verity’s next novel. As she gets to work, she discovers a secret that makes her new assignment even more complicated.
The dialogue is fascinating, and I was enthralled by the soft-spoken nature of almost everyone in the cast, especially Josh Hartnett and Dakota Johnson whenever they share space. There’s a beat and a breath between every word, and it’s an intriguing choice to slow the pace and have the audience consider whether there’s hidden meaning behind what is said. Hartnett is always a sight for sore eyes, and his quiet demeanor leads you to believe there’s a lot hidden behind his seemingly genuine, kind nature. Johnson plays into the paranoid tropes, and when the fan starts slowing down from the debris hitting it, things level up to a new level of shock (at least in terms of what we’ve come to expect from this particular film). While Hathaway’s primary performance comes in the form of the autobiographical flash-forward version read by Johnson, she conveys a range of emotions through her eyes alone, making everything easy to second-guess.
It’s much more serious in tone than expected; it’s not a horror, but it shares notes of the genre here and there, with exquisite use of wide-angle shots that highlight slight motion in the background. These moments are fantastic and had me shaken at those rare instances.
It’s a mystery, a romance, and a thriller wrapped into one curiously pieced-together manuscript. While the pace and deliberate manipulation of the audience’s expectations may at times come off as first-draft material (especially the slow-moving finale), by the close it’s clear these choices led to the planned outcome, leaving you unsure what is true in this reality.
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