Verity - Movie Review

Verity is the kind of movie that keeps insisting it has secrets while explaining most of them before you have time to wonder. It stars Anne Hathaway as a hugely successful author, Dakota Johnson as a struggling writer, and Josh Hartnett as the husband caught between them.

After Hathaway’s character is left catatonic following an accident, Hartnett hires Johnson’s character to finish the bestselling series. She moves into the family home, starts reading the author’s autobiography, and discovers some deeply unpleasant material.

That setup should work. A writer enters a strange house, reads a disturbing manuscript, and begins questioning the people around her. Is the supposedly catatonic author actually aware of what’s happening? Is Johnson’s character imagining things? Is the husband hiding something?

Those questions are more interesting than most of what the movie actually does with them.

A Thriller With No Urgency

The main problem is that Verity is boring. I know that sounds basic, but it’s the review. This is supposed to be an erotic thriller, and somehow it manages to be neither especially erotic nor especially thrilling.

Johnson’s character spends most of the movie reading another writer’s autobiography and drifting into a romance with Hartnett’s character. The movie keeps circling around their attraction as though the audience is desperate to know whether these two attractive adults might eventually sleep together.

They do. The movie makes sure you know that this is meant to be the spicy part. There’s nudity. There are sex scenes. There are moments designed to announce that the erotic thriller has returned.

The problem is that adding sex to a slow movie does not automatically create tension. It just gives the slow movie some nudity.

The romance also feels detached from the more interesting material. The house, the manuscript, the family history, and the possibility that reality may not be what it seems should be driving the story. Instead, they often feel like interruptions between scenes of people having conversations about their feelings.

At any point, you could leave the theater to use the bathroom. You could come back several minutes later and probably understand exactly what was happening.

The Cast Is Better Than the Material

The performances are fine, which almost makes the movie more frustrating. Josh Hartnett’s return is welcome. He has an easy screen presence, and he gives the husband enough warmth and uncertainty to make the character watchable.

Dakota Johnson is also one of those actors I keep wanting to like more than I do in movies like this. The script gives her a character who is supposed to be awkward, overwhelmed, and out of her depth. Unfortunately, that mostly means she walks through the movie looking like she would rather be somewhere else.

At one point, the husband asks if she’s having a good time. Her response is basically, “No, that’s just my face.”

That may be a joke, but it also feels like the movie accidentally explaining its lead performance.

The best acting in the film comes from Anne Hathaway playing a catatonic woman. She spends much of the movie unable to speak or move, yet somehow gives the character more presence than most of the people who are allowed to have dialogue.

That is not an insult to Hathaway. It is an insult to the screenplay.

The Plot Twist Problem

The movie’s biggest issue is the way it handles its mystery. A twist can reframe everything that came before, but it still needs to make sense once the pieces are on the table.

Here, the ending feels like a twist was required, so the movie stapled one onto the story.

The plot becomes increasingly convoluted, but the added complexity never creates more intrigue. It just creates more explanations. By the third act, the movie is trying to turn every earlier detail into evidence while also asking you to ignore the fact that much of the conflict could have been avoided with one honest conversation.

That’s the worst kind of twist: one that exists to surprise you for five minutes and then collapses under basic scrutiny.

There are two possible ways to read the ending. Either what you’ve seen is basically what happened, in which case there isn’t much mystery, or the movie wants you to accept a more complicated explanation that makes even less sense.

Neither option is satisfying.

The Book May Be Another Story

Verity is based on a novel that apparently has a passionate fan base and an equally passionate group of people who hate it. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t judge how closely the adaptation follows it.

What I can say is that the movie’s central premise gets buried under all of its extra machinery.

A simpler version might have worked better: an inexperienced writer is hired to complete the work of her idol, moves into the idol’s home, and slowly begins to crack under the pressure of living up to that reputation. That could have been a psychological thriller about ambition, insecurity, and artistic obsession.

Instead, the movie piles on romance, family secrets, sexual tension, questionable memories, and a final explanation that seems designed to produce a gasp whether or not it holds together.

It reminded me of Black Swan if the ballet had been replaced with ghostwriting and the psychological breakdown had been replaced with a lot of standing around in expensive rooms.

Final Take

I wanted Verity to be fun. I wanted a nasty little domestic thriller with an outrageous premise, a dangerous romance, and enough absurdity to make the whole thing entertaining.

What I got was a movie that takes too long to go nowhere, then rushes toward an ending that does not survive close inspection.

The cast deserved better. The premise deserved better. Even the erotic thriller deserves better.

This is not a movie that was enjoyable until the ending. The ending is bad, but getting there is the bigger problem.

I was bored. I checked my watch. And by the time the movie reached its big revelation, I was mostly wondering why everyone in this house had made communication so difficult.

Verdict: Skip it unless you’re committed to seeing every erotic thriller revival, no matter how sleepy.

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