It’s not the movie page turner it should have been.
“Verity” is the latest adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s book, after like the TV series “Confess,” the emotional “It Ends With Us “ the immature “Regretting You,” and the likable “Reminders of Him.” I’m sure that Hoover’s fans are salvaging to see this movie, especially with its star power from Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett, but the twists that the book provides doesn’t really leave up to the imagination on film.
Think to last year when “The Housemaid,” which also involved two women, a man, and the twist and turns that draw the lines between strong womanhood and the game of predator and prey. Now imagine if somebody wanted to cash in on the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which I’m sure you know also starred Johnson, and ended up failing to take any risks in the story. It’s the kind when readers or nonreaders of the book know what’s going to happen, and begin to lose interest in how the film handles them in the long shot.
Hathaway is Verity Crawford, the successful author of a book series where she specializes in writing from the point of view of villains. She’s the kind to really delve into the motives of them-what makes them tick and what their intentions would unfold. That’s something to keep readers entertained. And on the other end of the spectrum, Johnson is Lowen Ashleigh, the unpopular author, whose work is inspired by Verity’s books and prefers not to have many fans in New York City. She’s more of the provincial type, coming from a small town where everyone knows each other. And now, she’s like if Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” moved to NYC and nobody was singing her name.
One day, on the way to an important meeting, Lowen’s face gets covered with in blood from a car accident, and Verity’s husband Jeremy (Hartnett) comes to her aid with a spare shirt. Not only is he at that very same meeting, but she is asked to write the remaining three books for Verity at their house in Vermont, while the celebrated author is paralyzed from a car accident. The house also has Verity and Jeremy’s son Crew (Brady Wagner), whose twin sister Harper (Sienna Kulovitz) is dead, and the caretaker Anna (Irina Dvorovenko), who doesn’t really get much screen time.
As she begins to work on the books, Lowen not only finds out that Jeremy hasn’t read any of Verity’s books for the sake of her narrative, but also discovers Verity’s secret manuscript about how she met Jeremy and what her life unfolded in the years that followed. She reads chapters of it either like a bedtime story of a TV show with one episode per night.
It would be inevitable that the unpopular author would have a romantic fling with the husband, and it would be inevitable that Verity may or may not be completely catatonic after all. Either that’s the case or Lowen is just seeing things. You decide. But I think she’s faking her disability.
“Verity” was directed by Michael Showalter, who previously collaborated with Hathaway in “The Idea of You,” and its screenplay was by Nick Antosca, whose last written film was “Antlers.” Those were smart movies with the right respective material that took chances with the actors with “The Idea of You” specializing in romance and “Antlers” specializing in terrors. This one, however knows how to use Hathaway and Hartnett with the right convincing natures, but the same material we’ve seen done better or worse in other films. I can sense when a movie wants to have the actors adapting to their book characters, but plays whatever happens a bit too safe.
Johnson had a fresh year in 2025 with “Materialists” and “Splitsville,” which both proved that she can act with honesty and consistency. But in “Verity,” she reminded me of how lousy “Fifty Shades of Grey” was with her tone and expressions. It’s more of the same, and doesn’t really broaden her horizons as an actress. And Hathaway has been having a fresh 2026 with “Mother Mary,” “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” “The Odyssey,” and “The End of Oak Street,” and she works well here in flashbacks with her narrative and when she’s in the hospital bed with her dispositions, but it’s no favor to call attention to “Verity.”
