‘Verity’ Review: A Ghostwriter, a Locked Manuscript and a House That Knows Too Much

‘Verity‘ finally reaches theaters on October 2, after originally being dated for May. It is the latest Colleen Hoover novel to get the big screen treatment, following ‘It Ends With Us’, ‘Regretting You’ and ‘Reminders of Him’. Michael Showalter directs from a script by Nick Antosca, with Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett in the leads.

The premise is a juicy one. Lowen Ashleigh, played by Johnson, is a struggling writer hired to ghostwrite the next books for bestselling author Verity Crawford, who can no longer move or speak after a car accident. Lowen settles into the Crawford home, and while sorting through notes she stumbles on an autobiographical manuscript that reads more like a confession than a novel.

Here is where my patience started to fray. Showalter gives the house a cold, glossy sheen, all wintry light and hushed corridors, like a very expensive perfume advert stretched to feature length. The polish is lovely, but the machinery underneath it moves far too slowly for a story that should be crackling with menace.

A big reason is how the film delivers its secrets. Huge portions of the runtime are Lowen reading pages aloud, which turns the story’s darkest revelations into narrated exposition rather than something you feel unfolding. It takes over an hour for the tension to reach a simmer, and by then the twists have been so heavily underlined and second guessed that they lose their bite.

The saving grace is Hathaway, and it is not close. Whether she is swaggering through flashbacks or lying nearly motionless in the present, she keeps one question alive at all times, which is whether this woman is really as helpless as she appears. That uncertainty is the most thrilling thing in the movie, and she plays it with real relish.

Johnson is a good fit for Lowen, her deadpan manner and low, seductive narration giving the material just enough of the pulpy wink it needs. Hartnett is stuck with a husband role that gives him little to chew on, and he is often overshadowed whenever the two women share the frame. The love scenes are meant to smolder, yet they land as awkward rather than steamy, which is a real problem for a film built on desire and deception.

And yet I could not fully dismiss it. Once the plot tips from enjoyably ludicrous into outright preposterous, there is a gleeful silliness that I found hard to resist, and I laughed a few times when the film probably did not intend me to. It is not the nasty, daring thriller it keeps promising to be, but it is never dull when Hathaway is on screen.

I wanted more danger, more nerve and a lot more heat, but I left the theater entertained by the trio at its center. For me ‘Verity’ earns 6 out of 10, a glossy and uneven page turner that is carried almost entirely by its cast.

Did ‘Verity’ pull you into its web of lies or leave you cold, and do you agree with my verdict, so tell me in the comments.