Verity
The posters for VERITY boldly pronounce, "There is no light where we are going." For full transparency, it should have also added "and no human dialogue and an incredibly impossible story with plot holes the size of New Jersey".
I so wanted this film to be a 2020's version of the superb erotic thrillers of the 80's like "Basic Instinct" and "Jagged Edge". It's just begging for a smooth Jerry Goldsmith music score.
Alas.
We meet writer Lowen Ashleigh (a fine Dakota Johnson) whose author readings at an NYC bookstore around her latest novel draws more flies than patrons. She apparently writes dark, thoughtful novels and her agent Corey (Ismael Cruz Cordova) tells her to drop everything and get to a meeting with a major publisher. Cordova (Lord of the Rings: Ring of Power) is one of the best actors in the film, turning every scene he's in into something interesting. He's terrific, but gone too soon.
That publisher meeting is proceeded by one of the strangest versions of what Roger Ebert used to call a "meet cute" I've ever seen. Let's just say instead of two major characters meeting in line at the same coffee shop and magically ordering the same latte, one gets covered in flesh and blood and the other helps them clean up. It's one of a couple shocks in the film, but the only one that isn't heavily telegraphed in advance.
The film has immersed us by this point in the public persona of hugely popular thriller novelist Verity Crawford, played to the hilt by Anne Hathaway. Hathaway is having a good time in this part, playing against type and chewing the scenery, especially any headboard in sight.
It seems that Verity has had a car accident and her husband Jeremy (a fun Josh Hartnett) and her publisher are adamant that no one in the public finds out. So they'd like to hire Lowen to ghost write the next installment of her hugely popular series of novels.
Verity starts boning up on Verity's novels, shortly after her pompous pontification that she hasn't read any of them, because "she never reads any book that you can buy in an airport". WTF. Smug much?
Faster than you can say "my elitist standards can be bought" Lowen is moving into the Crawford estate, a sprawling house in a snowy, remote location perfect for murderous intrigue. The dialogue is so bad in some of the these scenes that I laughed out loud. Shortly after learning that an important plot point took place on the lake behind the home, Lowen looks out the massive windows at at the snowy landscape and says, "Is that a field?" LOL LOL Who would say that?
Bad writing in this screenplay is just getting going.
Per the trailers, Lowen meets Verity, who is completely catatonic and unable to move or speak, but damned if Verity doesn't keep seeing Verity turning to look at her or seeming to stare out the window at her like Mrs. Bates keeping an eye on Norman.
Lowen finds a hidden USB with secret files from Verity, a book? A statement? A confession?
She begins to read the autobiography and as Verity spills the past, we relive it on screen. How Verity and Jeremy met, how in love they were, how she wrote her first novel because she couldn't bear to be away from him when he traveled.
Just as things begin to sink into very formulaic Hallmark romance movie territory, the story takes a very, very dark twist that I really admired.
It's SO dark and SO twisted that it's off putting, which I appreciated as it appeared to swerve the film into a very different tale.
That goodwill was soon wasted though, as the screenplay grows increasingly desperate to keep shocking you with surprises and unexpected twists. They grow dumber and dumber and the big scene between Jeremy and Verity is a roller coaster of clever before it dives into stupidity.
I ask you. After you see the film, think about Anna, the medical caretaker that lives at the home with Jeremy and the children. She takes care of Verity 24/7, except when she runs to the store, always with some haunting word that she's leaving that seems to carry great weight. Is she aware of what's really going on? How in the world of common sense could she not be? Wouldn't she find the dramatic finale between Verity, Lowen and Jeremy strange? Where did Anna go?
There is no way any coroner with a brain would say that body in the lake died of drowning when there would clearly be no water in its lungs. So Verity, one of the country's most visible and popular writers has a car accident and long recovery and not one doctor, nurse, orderly or janitor leaks it to the press? Huh?
On Anna, It's as if the writers just decided she was a plot hole, so "we just wont mention her again and hope nobody notices". Forensics? "Meh, nobody watches Dateline, they'll buy this crap".
There's a lot of that going on here.
I've never read a Colleen Hoover novel, I'm clearly not her target audience, but the writing seems very sloppy. My wife and I enjoyed the film adaption of "It Ends With Us" a lot more than this film.
Our trio of leads aren't to blame. Hathaway is really enjoyable, no matter how outlandish her character gets. Hartnett is perfectly cast and kept me guessing all the way to the final scene and beyond. Johnson shows real versatility as Lowen proves to be much more than just a reserved writer looking for validation.
I liked the "who is manipulating who" threadline that's woven from the first frame to the last, but there are just too many plot holes to make Verity more than a middling thriller, dressed up in a lot of superb production design and defying serious gravity thanks to three good actors.
At least 20 minutes too long, by equal measure sexy and boring, VERITY can't hold a candle to even the basic instincts it aspires to, earning a C.
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