As I sit here, bathed in the eerie red glow of my LED face mask, contemplating the best way to murder a movie and dispose of its body, I have to ask myself: where did Verity go so wrong? 2026 has been a year of brilliant, back-to-back Anne Hathaway films. A true Hathawayssance. But now it all comes to a car-crash finish with this overripe thriller that’s less ‘noir’ and more ‘nah’.
The beautifully deadpan Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to ghost-write for literary sensation Verity Crawford (Hathaway). The next instalment in Verity’s series of disturbing thrillers is due soon, but after a horrible car accident, she lies comatose at home, cared for by her handsome husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) and a sinister nurse. By sinister, I mean foreign, because nothing creeps out an American audience like an efficient older woman with an accent.
A smattering of potential…
It’s a modern-gothic setup with all the ingredients of a guilty pleasure: a glamorous cast, a gloriously bizarre location, a complex mystery full of sex and death. As Lowen takes over Verity’s novel, lives in Verity’s house, wears her clothes and spends time with her very sad (and very six-packed) husband, she begins fantasising about taking over Verity’s whole life. Then, while going through Verity’s office, she stumbles across a hidden manuscript in which Verity outlines her own scheming, murderous thoughts. Lowen starts to sense something is off. Is it just her guilty conscience, or is she actually catching glimpses of Verity everywhere? Could Verity be less comatose than everyone thinks?
Hathaway’s stunningly psychotic performance nails the camp villainy. Her Verity serves vicious side-eye masked by a fake smile. You’re left wondering whether this woman could kill her own child, once she’s finished squeezing into an amazing cocktail dress and applying an immaculate red lip. Johnson, meanwhile, is at her best as a slightly bemused damsel, desperate to comfort another woman’s hot hubby.
Amazon MGM Studios, Sony Pictures Releasing International
“Logic as thin as a wet Temu T-shirt”
But where Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel was a tasty page-turner, the film is surprisingly bland. The glossy veneer of Hollywood prestige only serves to make the book’s gripping twists look silly on screen, with logic as thin as a wet Temu T-shirt. The mix of crazy/sexy/cruel never delivers. This erotic-thriller is just robotic-filler, going through the motions without a flicker of excitement.
Verity would have benefited from leaning into its B-movie premise, as last year’s far superior The Housemaid did. What could have been an entertaining Saturday night at the cinema will instead be a lazy Sunday afternoon on the sofa when it inevitably lands on Prime in a few months. I hate to show my age, but this is straight-to-DVD territory.
Chad Armstrong is an independent film and theatre critic who runs Cultural Binge. Read more of his reviews here and follow him on social here.
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