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A remarkable Anne Hathaway tries her best to salvage Verity’s bumpy, soap opera-like screenplay. Dakota Johnson shines in some moments but is sometimes held back by the material.
Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett starrer Verity is all set to release in theatres on October 2.
VerityA
2.5/5
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett Director: Michael ShowalterMusic: Volker Bertelmann
Verity Movie Review: Michael Showalter’s Verity based on Colleen Hoover’s eponymous novel is packed with mood, a languorous pace and aesthetics. It unravels in a wintry, snow-covered Vermont where a veil of grey looms large. It adds to the tension, the suspense, the claustrophobia. Much like most thrillers, the action unfolds inside a sprawling mansion, one whose closets are filled with skeletons.
In a scene, Dakota Johnson’s Lowen Ashleigh is seen reading a manuscript penned by Anne Hathaway’s Verity Crawford. “But know one thing, there’s no light where we’re going,” goes a line. This motif of darkness is both literal and metaphorical here. Verity, of course, is known for her dark, twisted novel characters. She also braces us for what’s in store.
Unfortunately, that’s all there is to the film – this looming sense of darkness. Remove the winters and the greys and you’ll be left with a story that sure is brimming with a lot of heightened twists and turns. But almost all of them are predictable and feel contrived. Verity, at best, could be described as a glossy soap opera, much like its fellow domestic thriller, The Housemaid.
The film, much like the novel, keeps escalating domestic melodrama, sexual intrigue, betrayals and shocking revelations rather than relying purely on psychological suspense. The film opens with a media interview with ‘bestselling author on the planet’ Verity Crawford. The action then shifts to a year later. We’re introduced to Lower Ashleigh, another thriller writer, who hasn’t risen to eminence yet.
She’s seen addressing a handful of bored readers at a bookstore. But she pretty much likes being invisible. An incident leads her to meet Jeremy, who introduces himself as a real-estate agent, who lost his daughter eight months ago. On her agent’s insistence when Lowen arrives at Hachette, she’s offered to finish Verity’s next novel in the Noble Virtues series as she’s unable to fulfill her contract.
Though apprehensive initially, she decides to sign an NDA and take up the offer upon a bit of nudging from her agent and Jeremy, who’s revealed to be Verity’s husband. She also realises that $75000 will help her clear the debt that her deceased mother has left behind. She travels to Vermont and learns that Verity is now catatonic and wheelchair-bound following an accident.
As she goes through Verity’s notes and outlines, Lowen uncovers several secrets about her personal life – marriage, motherhood and career. While doing so, she also gets close to Jeremy. However, she gradually becomes suspicious that Verity’s actually mobile and possibly pretending to be more disabled than she is and that she’s secretly observing her.
Now, the only strong link here is Verity’s character sketch. If we remove the ‘antagonistic journalling’ bit, she makes for a deliciously ruthless character and we first get a hint of it when she learns of her pregnancy. She becomes insecure and jealous of the thought of her husband loving their unborn twins more than her.
She grows green with envy and looks visibly broken when he tells her that a couple’s love for each other maybe conditional but their love for their children will always remain unconditional. Even after giving birth, she would often fantasise and wonder, what if she didn’t have children as then she would become Jeremy’s priority again. Each time her daughter cried, she wanted to punish her.
Verity, in her notes, admits that she was going through withdrawal as her husband ‘wasn’t worshipping and loving’ her. So, yes, one of the more interesting aspects of the film is its refusal to romanticise motherhood. Instead of presenting mothers as inherently nurturing, self-sacrificing figures, the story explores the darker, more ruthless side of maternal instinct.
A mother’s resentment, possessiveness and an almost disturbing sense of competition with her toddlers is brought to the fore, forcing us to confront the uncomfortable possibility that maternal love can coexist with darker impulses. Another of the film’s strength is its ambiguous ending, that leaves us with a sense of discomfort – whether her final letter is in itself another deception.
The film also gets intimate scenes involving Verity and Jeremy right, using it to underline the power she holds within their relationship. It isn’t merely a sensual interlude, It captures the intensity of Verity’s desire for her husband and the complicated ways in which love, possession and power can coexist within their relationship.
The bite mark on the bed rest becomes an extension of Verity’s sense of ownership – a physical manifestation of how fiercely she claims her husband as hers. Lowen then attempts to replicate that gesture and by extension, her place in Jeremy’s life. It becomes a symbolic attempt to position herself as the new object of his desire while stepping into the space Verity once occupied.
It’s in these moments that the film shines. Leading the cast is Anne Hathaway, who plays the titular character. She brings a quiet, unsettling intensity to Verity, particularly in the scenes where the character’s physical vulnerability is juxtaposed with the possibility of something far more calculating underneath. Her performance benefits from restraint.
Her softness in the flashback sequences, particularly in the scenes she shares with her husband, and her broken vulnerability while dealing with her children, act as a stark contrast to her character’s darker edge. She’s unapologetic, she’s overtly ambitious and she craves for love, and Anne understands the nuances of these contradictions, helping elevate a bumpy screenplay.
Dakota plays Lowen with a muted unease that suits a character constantly caught between curiosity, fear and attraction. Her ‘resting boring face’ works in the favour of the narrative but her performance is sometimes held back by the material itself. Lowen is required to process increasingly outrageous revelations with relatively little emotional variation and she shines in these quieter moments.
Josh Hartnett brings a grounded, brooding quality to Jeremy but the character remains the least fully explored of the central trio. He gives Jeremy enough warmth to make his grief and attraction to Lowen believable while also allowing glimpses of the ambiguity surrounding his relationship with Verity. But the screenplay positions him as merely an object around which the two women orbit.
On the other hand, Irina Dvorovenko’s nurse Anna is unnecessarily shrouded in suspense, feeling more like an ornamental device designed to heighten the mystery than a character with any real narrative purpose. And this bears a testament to how the makers, ultimately, make use of all kinds of escalation and ornamentation to replace thrill.
Yes, there’s a couple of jump scares served to us in the name of thrill but that’s not enough to keep this narrative afloat. Even for those who haven’t read the book, the makers drop ample hints, making the twists visible from miles away. They rarely feel earned. Very little is left to the imagination. We’re constantly spoon-fed clues and reminded of what to anticipate.
One may argue that the film is merely adapting what’s written in the book and that’s fair. But what may have worked as a page-turning device in the novel becomes increasingly predictable onscreen. An adaptation needs to take a different approach to keep viewers hooked, especially when it comes to what it chooses to reveal and when. And that pretty much messes up this story.
Quick Answers
Ask News18Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s novel, the film follows struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh, who is hired by real-estate agent Jeremy Crawford to complete his incapacitated wife Verity’s book series. While staying at their secluded Vermont mansion, Lowen uncovers a manuscript containing dark and disturbing confessions about Verity’s marriage and family.
Ask News18About the Author
Titas Chowdhury is a Special Correspondent at News18 Showsha. She writes about cinema, music and gender in cinema. Interviewing actors and filmmakers, writing about latest trends in showbiz and bringi…Read More
September 30, 2026, 18:30 IST
