{"id":1236714142,"date":"2026-09-30T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/?p=1236714142"},"modified":"2026-09-30T11:39:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:39:47","slug":"verity-review-anne-hathaway-dakota-johnson-josh-hartnett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/movies\/movie-reviews\/verity-review-anne-hathaway-dakota-johnson-josh-hartnett-1236714142\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Verity’ Review: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett Try and Fail to Slink Their Way Through a Dumb Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\tIt\u2019s been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. But what about writing about writing? That often seems even more impossible, and fruitless, than doing a tango to explain, say, the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Look to the most recent example, the new film Verity<\/em>, in which Anne Hathaway plays a writer who is said to go to such dark places in her popular novels that one must assume she herself is some sort of wicked entity. Only, every time we see or hear that writing in the film, it\u2019s about as banal as something James Patterson wrote on a cocktail napkin and sold for $10 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tI suppose we shouldn\u2019t be that surprised, considering the film\u2019s source: Verity<\/em> is based on a novel by the blockbuster queen of tortured romance Colleen Hoover, who took a turn into domestic thriller for this truth versus fiction potboiler. Hoover has certainly found a way to strike a chord with readers the world over, but she\u2019s not exactly an adept stylist. Nor, it turns out, is she very good at building a mystery. Verity <\/em>is chock full of clunky reveals and \u201chuh??\u201d-inducing twists. It\u2019s the palest of Gone Girl<\/a><\/em> imitations, mixed with a tinge of Bront\u00eb gothic and that infamous 2005 Modern Love<\/em> column about a writer (Ayelet Waldman) loving her husband more than her kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tWhich sounds kinda fun, right? And indeed Verity<\/em> \u2014 directed with straightforward competence and a faint wry smirk by Michael Showalter and adapted by screenwriter Nick Antosca (Apple TV’s Cape Fear<\/em> <\/a>series) \u2014 is a mild lark for its first hour. Dakota Johnson, deadened of voice and dewy of eye, plays Lowen (Hoover\u2019s character names are among the silliest aspects of her work; there’s a kid named Crew in this movie), a published but under-read novelist who is drawn by money and curiosity to snowy Vermont to complete an odd task. She\u2019ll help finish, or really ghostwrite, the final few novels of Hathaway\u2019s Verity Crawford (again, dumb names), who is mute and paralyzed following a car accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tOK, Lowen may also have been lured in by the enticement of Verity\u2019s hunky husband, Jeremy, played by a fine-wine Josh Hartnett. When sifting through Verity\u2019s notes in her sleek home office, Lowen discovers a secret manuscript for a shocking autobiography (of sorts), in which Verity divulges perhaps the most sinister secret possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tSo we\u2019ve got a lavishly appointed modernist mansion, a smolderingly grieving husband and some literary intrigue. That ought to all add up to something pulpy and propulsive, even if the excerpts of Verity\u2019s prose read like Robert Langdon is about to jump out from behind a corner and yell \u201cSymbology!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tPerhaps keen to that silliness, Showalter fills the early stretch of the film with amusing details. There are cameos from the likes of Gayle King, Alex Cooper and Sean \u201cHot Ones\u201d Evans, all of them interviewing Verity about her writing process. We see Lowen lying around and languidly pulling on her vape (she\u2019s a JUUL user) instead of doing any writing, which will be all too relatable for many scribes in the audience. And then there are the smash cuts to Hathaway comatose and staring into the middle distance, gaunt and drawn as if we\u2019ve just freeze-framed on Fantine midsong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tIt\u2019s a gas, and Hartnett, Johnson and Hathaway (the latter in flashbacks) initially know just how to pitch the hot-and-bothered, creepy melodrama of it all. But alas, eventually all involved have to get down to business and actually contend with the plot beats of Hoover\u2019s story, which is when the movie careens off a cliff, plummeting past so-bad-it\u2019s-good and crashing on the rocks of agonizingly dumb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tI won\u2019t spoil what\u2019s actually going on in Jeremy and Verity\u2019s Japandi-meets-\u201970s-coke-den house of horrors, but the revelations provoke so many logical questions that one leaves the theater stupefied and frustrated rather than giddy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThere\u2019s a bad clash of intentions happening here. Showalter, who has undergone a surprising career shift from alt comedian to journeyman director of women\u2019s pictures, clearly wants to try his hand at a lurid erotic thriller. Some of those trappings may be found in Hoover\u2019s novel, but she ultimately seems more interested in delivering a shivery, sophisticated treatise on the manipulations of the writing craft, its ability to sell fact as fiction and fiction as fact. Those two impulses may have agreed with one another in something with a more polished pedigree; in Verity<\/em>, though, their intersection loudly clanks. The movie is neither sexy nor smart, despite the objective hotness and intelligence of its performers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThough, it perhaps must be said that Johnson\u2019s glazed-over, murmuring style of line delivery does grow grating. I\u2019ve long defended her particular technique, typically finding something subtle but dynamic rippling underneath her placid exterior. But this time around, one sadly has to disagree with Lowen when she says she isn\u2019t actually bored, she just has \u201cresting bored face.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tBecause Johnson seems genuinely checked out here, barely committing to anything in the movie \u2014 she even pretends to eat a slice of pizza like she couldn\u2019t be bothered to figure out how real people eat pizza. That apathetic approach, which starts off pretty funny, becomes increasingly vexing, especially when the film takes a turn that requires some actual fire from Johnson\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tVerity <\/em>on the whole, with its shoulder-shrug of an ending, seems dismayingly uninterested in actually giving us a good story. Instead, it creates a few moments of effective mood and figures the job done well enough. Like Verity\u2019s writing, the film simply bandies about a handful of clich\u00e9s without giving them any original spin. It\u2019s an airport novel you\u2019d leave on the plane, an in-flight movie you\u2019ll likely doze off to someday, borne aloft toward somewhere I hope is far more interesting than what\u2019s wanly flickering in front of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fourth adaptation of best-selling novelist Colleen Hoover\u2019s work reunites Hathaway with her ‘The Idea of You’ director Michael Showalter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1223713,"featured_media":1236703949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"override_post_title":"","override_post_excerpt":"","authors":[],"contributors":[],"styled_by":[],"_image_credit":"","_wp_attachment_image_alt":"","pmc_selected_wwd_video_media":"","pmc_top_video_source":"","pmc_top_video_duration":"","wwd_top_video_source":"","wwd_top_video_duration":"","pmc_selected_featured_media":"","pmc_selected_video_media":"","pmc_selected_variety_video_media":"","variety_top_video_source":"","variety_top_video_duration":"","pmc_featured_media_has_alt_text":true,"_pmc_featured_animated_media_id":0,"_pmc_featured_video_override_data":"","_pmc_featured_video_override_url":"","_pmc_featured_video_response_data":"","pmc-gallery-linked-gallery":{},"pmc_list_item_description":"","primary_category":"","primary_vertical":"","_mt_pmc_exclude_from_seo":"","_pmc_opengraph_title":"","_pmc_opengraph_description":"","categories":59,"subcategories":114,"thr-review-summary-credits":"Release date:<\/strong> Friday, Oct. 2
Cast:<\/strong> Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett
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Screenwriter:<\/strong> Nick Antosca
","thr-full-credit":"Release date: Friday, Oct. 2
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett
Director: Michael Showalter
Screenwriter: Nick Antosca
Cinematographer:Jim Frohna
Production designer: Amy Williams
Costume designer: Jacqueline Demeterio
Music: Volker Bertelmann
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Casting: Tiffany Little Canfield, Bernard Telsey
","thr-review-mpaa-rating":"R","thr-review-running-time":"1 hour 57 minutes","_synopsis":"Truth is stupider than fiction in this literary misfire.","_air_date":"00-00-00","pmc-imdb-id":"","pmc-review-type":"movie-reviews","pmc-review-rating":"","pmc-review-rating-out-of":"","pmc-review-snippet":"","pmc-review-title":"Verity","pmc-review-canonical-link":"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt32261958\/","pmc-theatrical-release-date":0,"pmc-director":"Michael Showalter","pmc-review-image_attachment_id":0,"thr_post_headlines":"The fourth adaptation of best-selling novelist Colleen Hoover\u2019s work reunites Hathaway with her 'The Idea of You' director Michael Showalter.","_variety-sub-heading":"","mt_seo_title":"'Verity' Review: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson in Wan Erotic Thriller","mt_seo_description":"Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett star in Michael Showalter's mystery 'Verity,' the fourth screen adaptation of a Colleen Hoover 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