Verity reviews: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson in thriller
The Guardian called Verity an unconvincing mystery, but the film still leans hard into its pulpy setup: a struggling writer, a bestselling author in crisis, and a Vermont home full of secrets. Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett anchor the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel.
LONDON — Verity reviews are starting to land with one clear message: the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel leans hard into sex, secrecy and suspense, but The Guardian said it does not fully work as a mystery. The film stars Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett.
The setup is blunt and commercial. Dakota Johnson plays Lowen, a struggling writer who is approached by a legal team working for Verity Crawford, the bestselling author played by Anne Hathaway. They want Lowen to ghostwrite the rest of Crawford’s lucrative book series because Verity can no longer finish it.
Lowen accepts. Money is part of it. So is Jeremy, Verity’s husband, played by Josh Hartnett.
Verity reviews and the film’s core setup
The Guardian said Lowen is drawn into the Crawfords’ world after agreeing to stay in their Vermont home, a “gorgeous” place that gives the story its closed-off, isolated feel. Once there, she finds Verity immobile in a wheelchair and unable to speak.
That is where the thriller engine starts. Lowen, the review said, becomes even more unsettled when she discovers a manuscript. The text available to readers stops mid-thought in available reports, but the point is already clear: the story pivots on something hidden in the house, and on whether what Lowen finds can be trusted.
It is a tidy premise. A writer. A husband. A silent wife. A manuscript. The kind of setup that asks viewers to keep asking what is real and what is performance.
What the review says about the film
The Guardian framed Verity as an attempt to deliver the kind of “really enjoyable erotic mystery-thriller” that audiences have been missing, and linked that appetite to the success of Paul Feig’s The Housemaid. It also described the film as a drama adapted by screenwriter Nick Antosca from Hoover’s novel.
The review did not treat the movie as a complete success. It called the film “unconvincing,” even while acknowledging its pull as a pulpy, high-drama piece built around a sexy, dangerous domestic triangle. That split matters, because Verity is designed to sell atmosphere as much as plot.
For viewers, the appeal is obvious. The movie brings together a bestselling-author premise, a cramped house, a helpless wife and a husband who seems central to the tension. The risk is just as clear. If the mystery does not land, the whole thing can feel like a pile of gestures around a missing answer.
The cast gives the film its commercial weight. Hathaway plays the author with a polished, remote edge, Johnson takes the outsider role, and Hartnett fills the husband’s space inside the household. The Guardian’s review suggests the ingredients are there, even if the result does not fully deliver the charge the premise promises.
That leaves one thing hanging over every Verity reviews headline: the manuscript, and whatever it says about the woman in the wheelchair, the man in the house and the writer who walked in for work and found herself trapped inside the story.
