R | 1h 57 m | Drama, Suspence, Mystery, Thriller | 2026
In her fifth (!) 2026 movie, Anne Hathaway ends the year on something of a whimper. This half-realized erotic thriller largely fails to take full advantage of the chemistry between her and co-star Dakota Johnson.
No stranger to the genre (“The 50 Shades of Grey” trilogy), this is old hat stuff for Johnson, but is relatively new to Hathaway (the title lead in April’s “Mother Mary”). The actress has just hit her stride at the age of 43.
After years of swimming upstream, Hathaway has finally shed her teen ingenue (“Princess Diaries”) persona and has become one of the highest-in-demand industry leading ladies.
Based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover, the book was self-published by Hoover before she caught fire and was eventually reprinted by Grand Central Publishing.
Not in His Wheelhouse
“Verity” is the first non-comedy from director Michael Showalter save for the 2021 “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” a pretty straight forward bio-flick. Based on his resume, you might think serious mystery dramas are beyond Showalter’s wheelhouse. You’d be right.
Before the movie is barely 10 minutes in, it becomes clear that “Verity” is being helmed by someone thoroughly ill-at-ease with the material. It doesn’t help that the adapted screenplay is by Nick Antosca, a guy whose specialty is shlock horror.
The movie opens with Verity Crawford (Hathaway) in a wheelchair, unable to speak and near-comatose. Like Hoover, Verity writes books whose readers are about 95 percent over-30 suburban females.
Before she was injured, Verity was putting the finishing touches on a new, highly anticipated series, something she’ll probably never write. That is until Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) steps in with a workable, if not ideal, solution.
Career Advancement?
Jeremy approaches Lowen Ashley (Johnson), a fledgling novelist still getting over the loss of her mother which, after caring for her, has left Lowen deeply in debt. While initially intimidated, Lowen settles in and appears to be making progress. It helps that she was invited to temporarily move in to Crawford’s Vermont home and given full access to Verity’s exhaustive notes. Big mistake.
If this setup sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same one found in last year’s “The Housemaid” starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried. A beautiful (younger) woman moves into the home of an affluent couple with “issues.” Just exactly what those issues are aren’t made clear at first, but the clunky foreshadowing makes sure we’ll be hearing about them in short order.
Thanks to far too many flashbacks, we see that Jeremy and Verity led an idyllic life with their twin daughters and youngest child, a son named Crew (Brady Wagner). The daughters are no longer in the picture for suspicious reasons found in Verity’s secret unpublished biographical novel.
Another ‘Gone Girl’?
This is the point where “Verity” starts to take on traits of the 2014 “Gone Girl.” Both movies, and the books they are based on, feature an unreliable female narrator who reveals only what she wants us to hear and no more.
The details of the Crawfords’ plights and those taking place in the novel are too similar to ignore and come across as confessional. Is Verity admitting to a crime or is she merely taking a real life event and fictionalizing it or twisting it to satisfy her own needs?
This and other questions are addressed but not necessarily answered in the third act. Per the standard dictum in mystery thrillers, it gives us a first fake ending and then a second final ending.
It fits in with everything that preceded it. The filmmakers didn’t take any major chances and respected Hoover’s faithful by not straying too far from the source material. Is this a great mystery thriller? No, but it’s not as bad as most mainstream critics are making it appear.
It appeals to its core audience (Hoover fans), as evidenced in the most recent Rotten Tomatoes score. As of Oct. 3, critics gave the movie a 34 percent positive rating and the audience at 69 percent. One very negative, the other moderately positive.
It’s just the latest example of the ongoing disconnect between the elite intelligentsia and the working class.
“Verity” is now playing in theaters.
‘Verity’
Director: Michael Showalter
Stars: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Cordova
Running Time: 1 hour, 57 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Release Date: Oct. 2, 2026
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
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