Since 2024, there have been four feature film adaptations of Colleen Hoover novels. But the most recent, “Verity,” is a bit of a different animal than Hoover’s standard romantic fare.
Directed by Michael Showalter with a screenplay from Nick Antosca, “Verity” stars Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh (continuing the trend of Colleen Hoover protagonists with bonkers names), a struggling author trying to make ends meet in the wake of her mother’s death. Her luck changes when out of nowhere, she receives a lucrative offer to ghostwrite for none other than bestselling author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), whose psychological thriller series is unfinished – and might continue to be so, since Verity was recently in a car accident and can no longer move or talk.
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Throughout the movie, multiple characters – Verity, Lowen, even Gayle King in an early cameo – tell us how messed up Verity’s books are. They’re depraved, wicked, and vicious, so much so that even Verity’s supportive husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) can’t bring himself to read them.
This is what the characters are telling you. But then, you’ll hear voiceover of a passage from the book (usually read pretty deliciously by Hathaway, all things considered), and it’ll be a fairly tame sequence about stabbing someone and not feeling bad about it. And that’s kind of “Verity’s” whole problem – it’s not nearly as twisted as it seems to think it is.
As far as Hoover adaptations go (and they’re becoming a genre unto themselves), “Verity” is operating at a higher level than most. It’s got bigger stars, and Showalter clearly has an affection for classic noir, the film’s visual references ranging from “Leave Her to Heaven” to “The Night of the Hunter” to “Notorious.” There’s a classiness to this movie, at least on the surface, that elevates it above what you might expect. But, maybe “Verity” could have used a bit of good old fashioned trash. Because, besides Hathaway doing her damndest to inject this thing with a bit of humor, “Verity” is just about as boring as it could possibly be.
Lowen tentatively takes the ghostwriting offer, and things start to escalate when she discovers Verity’s secret memoir, which contains startling revelations about the depths of Verity’s obsession with her husband and the truth about the death of the couple’s child, Harper, who recently drowned.
The premise of “Verity” is a promising one, and one that personally appeals to me more so than Hoover’s other work. But, despite the excitement of the premise, “Verity’ is a very stagnant film. While Showalter might visually allude to classic noir, sometimes even quite strikingly, he fails to capture the drama, the grit, the atmosphere. Half of “Verity” consists of shots of Lowen curled up on a couch, swaddled in a sweater, looking vaguely distressed while she reads Verity’s memoir, text from the manuscript itself fading in and out across her face. It’s not at all cinematic, and yet it happens so often it almost feels a bit like a troll.
But that might also be because the movie’s lead is one of our very best trolls, and if I’m being honest, I can’t be completely sure that “Verity” isn’t just another one of Dakota Johnson’s tricks. Johnson is capable of delivering a good performance with the right material, but when she’s checked out, she either can’t hide it or doesn’t care to. In something like “Madame Web,” that quality is perhaps the only calling card of the film, but here, it’s a little more laconic than you’d like. When Jeremy reveals to Lowen that his and Verity’s daughter is dead, Johnson slowly covers her mouth with her hand, and it comes across more as someone trying not to laugh than someone displaying genuine shock. There’s a world where that’s a little funny, but the movie is far too staid to take advantage of it. And when she’s matched with Hathaway – who plays Verity’s villainry with sensuous bite, but unfortunately is relegated to playing brain dead most of the time – the two tones just don’t match.
‘Verity” is the type of movie where you’re constantly trying to figure out the twist before it happens – proof that what’s actually happening in front of you at any given moment isn’t all that interesting, so you’re left to let your mind wander and theorize. But when the truth is revealed, it lands with a thud, dumber and duller than you’d expect. “Verity” makes a weak attempt to get at something about manipulation and truth, but when your movie ends with a fake clip from the celebrity interview show “Hot Ones,” I’m not sure how I can be expected to take anything about it seriously. Now that I think about it, maybe this movie is a giant troll.
