Film Review - Verity (2026)

Verity is based off of the novel by Colleen Hoover and stars Dakota Johnson as Lowen an up and coming novelist who is asked to finish the new novel by Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) after she is paralyzed in a car accident but when she goes to her house to start work on the book she meets Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) and son Crew (Brady Wagner) and starts to suspect something is wrong.

Verity is not a terrible movie but its yet another movie this year that I wish was better than it is and the main problem is that it feels like the movie tips its hand as to who the bad guy is and because of that you sit there in the cinema watching the movie and waiting for it to catch up to you and that is death in a thriller,

What also doesn’t help is how silly this movie gets, movies can have twists and turns that surprise audiences (hell M Night Shymalan has built his career on such a thing) but this one throws some real doozy’s at you and I sat there thinking “what the fuck is this” and also Michael Showalter’s direction feels bland and it made me wish for someone like Paul Verhoeven or the late great Richard Marquand to direct this,

Because when you look back at Basic Instinct (which this movie clearly wants to be like) or Eye of the Needle or Jagged Edge those films were thrillers but had a sense of style to them, a sense of dread in them and in the case of Basic Instinct a genuine sexiness and kinkiness to it that this movie desperately needs but feels afraid to properly embrace the way Verhoeven did in that film,

And speaking of Verhoeven and Marquand, Dakota Johnson could’ve used either of them in the director’s chair as so many of her line readings here feel flat and are said in this soft voice that has little to no emotion in it and Johnson has been good elsewhere such as in the Materialists which Celine Song made but Song could get a good performance out of here but Showalter cannot and it further hurts this movie,

As for Hartnett and Hathaway, Hartnett is fine but is not as fun to watch as he was in Trap in 2024 but again M Night Shymalan directed that film and got a great villain performance out of him whereas here you look in his eyes and you can see that he’s the bad guy and it also hurts this movie but Anne Hathaway is easily the best thing about this movie as she clearly understands what movie this is and commits to it 115% and she’s so good here I wish she got to play a Catherine Tremell type character in a Basic Instinct esque film,

And so that was Verity and again it’s not terrible but I wish it was better than it is and in better hands it could’ve been, 2 out of 5.