“Verity” feels like if a 13 year-old rewrote “Gone Girl”. The film is one of the many Colleen Hoover book-to-film adaptations to have come out in the past few months. It follows Dakota Johnson’s character, Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling author who is approached to finish a popular book series by well-known and incapacitated writer Verity Crawford, played by Anne Hathaway. Lowen agrees to the arrangement and stays in her Vermont home, with Verity’s husband and child, to look at her old manuscripts in order to put together the novel. However, she finds a disturbing, hidden manuscript that was supposedly an autobiography of the popular author’s life, but, by the end of the movie viewers are left questioning the truth about the Crawfords.
Having read the book previously, I knew that I would enjoy this film significantly more than other Colleen Hoover adaptations because I find that her greatest strength is her thriller writing. Even in her romance books, there are often twists that greatly raise the stakes in the story; however I find that these plot devices work better in her horror books. I thought that the writing translated well on-screen and the suspense was maintained throughout the film.
However, the writing is not free of problems. Throughout the film, there were podcast segments, including “Hot Ones” with Sean Evans and “Call Her Daddy” with Alex Cooper, that Verity supposedly appeared on to promote her book. This addition seemed vastly unnecessary and it only did more to detach me from the story. Moreover, I think that the larger twist was implied too early on and I was left uninterested in the last act of the film.
While the writing was somewhat strong, Johnson’s acting was lack-luster at best. I think that her monotonous tone worked for the sarcasm and snark that she brought to the character, but her lack of vocal expression took me out of some serious scenes. For example, when Jeremy, Verity’s husband, is talking about his grief for his dead child, the camera, for an unknown reason, holds on Johnson’s seemingly vacant face as he sobs.
Inevitably, Anne Hathaway out-acted every other person in this movie while she was paralyzed in a wheelchair. I appreciated the stark switch from her good to evil persona as Lowen read her contradicting manuscripts and how she sustained the tension even when she was sitting still.
Overall, “Verity” is a cheap, pulpy thriller that was fun to hate-watch. However, I don’t think I will be in theaters for any more Colleen Hoover adaptations anytime soon. The Colleen Hoover adaptations need to stop
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