Fiction, fabrications, and fatal flaws: Hartnett shines while Johnson stumbles in the thriller Verity

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 / 5)

Directed by: Michael Showalter

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Anne Hathaway, Ismael Cruz Córdova

Running time: 114 minutes

Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s runaway 2018 publishing phenomenon, Verity arrives in cinemas bearing all the hallmarks of a vintage 1990s erotic thriller: isolated mansions, domestic secrets, passion, and a third act that deliberately pulls the rug out from beneath the audience’s feet. In the hands of director Michael Showalter, the film is undeniably trashy fun—a glossy, melodramatic potboiler that entertains on pure pulp adrenaline. Yet it is hobbled by an uneven central performance, landing squarely as an engrossing but flawed three-star curiosity.

The premise hooks us swiftly. Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), an introverted, struggling novelist on the brink of financial ruin, is offered a lucrative lifeline: ghostwrite the remaining installments of a wildly popular suspense series authored by Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway). Verity has been rendered silent and seemingly vegetative following a horrific car accident. Lowen accepts the assignment and moves into the sprawling, frost-bitten Crawford estate in Vermont to sift through the incapacitated author’s chaotic office notes.

Lowen quickly discovers an unpublished manuscript—an autobipgraphy titled So Be It. In its chilling pages, Verity is a narcissistic monster who resented her twin daughters for monopolizing the affections of her husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett). Worse, the text strongly suggests that Verity orchestrated the drowning of their young daughter. As Lowen reads on, she is torn between visceral horror and an escalating sexual attraction to the brooding, grieving Jeremy.

The narrative thrives on the claustrophobic dread inside the house, especially when Lowen begins to suspect that Verity is not in a coma at all, but watching her through half-closed lids. But the picture’s real talking point is its climax and its contradictory versions of reality.

After Lowen shows the damning memoir to Jeremy, an explosive confrontation ensues, however later, however, the film unleashes its final, devastating turn: Lowen discovers a hidden letter left behind by Verity.

That this central ambiguity remains intoxicating is largely down to Josh Hartnett. Continuing an impressive career renaissance that has seen him lean into layered, morally compromised characters, Hartnett delivers a standout performance. He plays Jeremy with a deceptively warm vulnerability, exuding the wounded gentleness of a broken father while subtly letting cold, hard glints of menace slip through his eyes. He calibrates every scene so precisely that you can easily view him either as a noble widower pushed past his breaking point or a calculating predator hiding behind a charming smile.

Regrettably, Dakota Johnson fails to meet him halfway. Carrying the perspective through which the entire audience experiences the nightmare, Johnson brings a baffling lethargy to Lowen. Her performance is muted and strangely detached, delivering lines of mounting dread with a mumble and greeting horrifying literary discoveries with the casual indifference of someone reviewing an electricity bill. Where the film desperately requires rising panic, paranoia, and moral disorientation, Johnson offers mostly vacant stares and vocal monotony. She fails to sell the psychological corrosion eating away at Lowen’s conscience, flattening scenes that should crackle with tension.

Thankfully, Anne Hathaway supplies enough theatrical, venomous presence in flashbacks—and in chillingly stillness—to balance the ledger. Verity may not ascend to the pantheon of classic psychological thrillers, and its lead protagonist often feels emotionally half-asleep, but Hartnett’s commanding turn and the deliciously unresolved battle between two conflicting truths keep this sordid tale well worth the ride.