Verity movie review: Diabolical Colleen Hoover thriller that embarrasses all involved

Well, that was diabolical.

Not diabolically twisty in a delicious way, Dick Dastardly rubbing his hands together in glee. Just diabolical. Like, bad, really bad.

Verity is an embarrassment for everyone involved. Dakota Johnson deserved better than this. Josh Hartnett deserved better than this. Anne Hathaway deserved better than this.

We all deserved better than this.

It’s billed as a paranoid psychological thriller, which is an accurate line in so far as the lead character is very paranoid and it culminates in a sequence that would’ve been thrilling if all your goodwill hadn’t already been sapped by the time you get there.

The Verity in question is Verity Crawford (Hathaway), a writer who, we’re told, is one of the highest selling novelists in the world. The books she writes are dark thrillers, always told from the perspective of the villain.

Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) is pulled into Verity’s world when she, a struggling writer with one published book to her name, is hired to complete a vegetative state Verity’s remaining books in her popular series.

To do that, Lowen has to temporarily move into Verity’s isolated, architecturally striking home in the middle of the Vermont woods. Because it’s always something in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?

There, Lowen sifts through mountains of notes and outlines in a dramatic, sunken room and she discovers a USB stick containing the manuscript of what appears to be Verity’s memoirs.

In them, which we hear in Hathaway’s breathy voiceover and see through seeming flashbacks, are confessions of her “true” nature as a manipulative, malevolent presence who tried to kill her own children from the moment they were born.

Haunted by Verity’s presence through the pages, Lowen becomes closer to Verity’s husband, Jeremy (Hartnett). But something feels really off about the whole thing, like as if she’s been watched by a woman who’s supposed to be brain dead.

You can probably guess where this is all going, although it does have a final reveal that is truly cooked. Nay, overcooked. It’s dumb but you can tell it thinks it’s clever.

The film meanders with long shots that’s supposed to be suspenseful, and rarely has any forward momentum. It becomes an exercise in watching three very pretty people trying to hold each other’s gaze.

It’s also missing the camp factor. If you’re making a psychological thriller, and with Hathaway no less, dial it up. Make it fun.

Paul Feig understood the assignment with last year’s offering, the similarly themed and genre-ed The Housemaid, which sprinted towards heightened thrills instead of just turning down the lights and calling it “sultry”.

Then again, Verity director Michael Showalter is who you get when you can’t get Feig. That’s probably unfair as journeyman Showalter has had creative successes such as Wet Hot American Summer and The Big Sick. But Verity will not be added to that list.

Perhaps its greatest crime is the ghastly dialogue. It’s not clear who bears the blame for this, screenwriter Nick Antosca or novelist Colleen Hoover, whose book this film was adapted from.

We’re supposed to believe Verity Crawford is a renowned, beloved and best-selling author when her writing, which is superimposed on the screen as well as spoken in voiceover, is the prose equivalent of a 13 year old’s diary scribblings.

If these words are taken verbatim from Hoover’s book, then it’s all the more baffling that the author is a BookTok sensation - and we should be very concerned about literacy levels. If it’s Antosca’s screenplay doing her dirty, then, Hoover should sue.

At one point in the film, Jeremy said he never reads his wife’s books. If only Hollywood hadn’t read Hoover’s tome, then we could have all been saved from this.

Rating: 1.5/5

Verity is in cinemas