Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michael Showalter
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Brady Wagner
There's a moment in Verity that sees a character confess that the reason they refuse to read airport novels is because they're afraid they might like them. It's no doubt meant as a finger in the eye of "literary snobs" who consider themselves above the work of authors like Colleen Hoover, on whose novel Verity is based. A cousin of the airport novel is the airplane movie, the sort of film you wouldn't go out of your way to seek out but if it's part of the in-flight programming on a lengthy trip you might give it a shot to pass the time. The ideal airplane movie is one that won't tax your tired brain, one that allows you to nod off for a few minutes without missing anything crucial. Verity is about as "airplane movie" as cinema gets.
Dakota Johnson plays Lowen, a struggling writer who has published a couple of critically well-received books that have failed to find an audience. Just as she's about to be evicted from her apartment, Lowen is approached by Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), the hunky husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway). Verity, who is famous enough to be invited on "Hot Ones", was recently involved in a car crash, and unbeknownst to the public, it has left her in a catatonic state. Jeremy claims his wife was a huge fan of Lowen, and he wants her to complete Verity's latest unfinished novel.
After some initial reluctance, Lowen agrees and moves into Jeremy and Verity's home in order to study the piles of notes the latter has left in her office. On a USB stick she discovers a manuscript of an unpublished autobiography in which Verity appears to confess to a shocking crime. Lowen also begins to suspect that Verity isn't as incapacitated as she appears, as she swears she has seen her peeking out windows and appearing in shadowy hallways late at night.
On face value, Verity seems like the sort of adult thriller audiences have been starved of in recent years. Three hot movie stars and a twisty plot should be a winning formula, but Verity is leaden in its execution. It's yet another reminder that a good-looking cast isn't enough to make a movie sexy; said cast needs to generate convincing heat, which is palpably absent here. Lowen and Jeremy's adultery plays like a necessary plot point rather than the result of any genuine desire.
As a thriller it's a dud because there's never any sense that anyone is in substantial danger, except that is for a character who is already dead when the movie begins. Rather than being posited as potential victims, both Jeremy and Lowen get pretty good deals here: he gets to shag Dakota Johnson while she gets a massive career boost. There is a central mystery here, but it's one that doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. The big twist is predictable because there's really nowhere else for the narrative to go at that point, while a final attempt to add some ambiguity similarly falls flat because it makes no sense for a certain character not to have done a certain action at some earlier point.
As with the recent hit The Housemaid, Verity is another thriller directed by a filmmaker (Michael Showalter) who seems to have no aptitude for this genre. Hollywood once had filmmakers who specialised in the thriller genre on speed dial, but that well has long dried up, and for some reason American mainstream cinema no longer reaches out to European and Asian directors (even with its shoddy script, you would imagine the likes of Francois Ozon and Park Chan-Wook might have made something interesting of Verity).
Like a trashy mystery novel, you'll stay to the end of Verity simply to see how it all turns out, but you'll probably wish you had spent your time more productively.
Verity is in UK/ROI cinemas from October 2nd.
