Colleen Hoover is a bad author. I say that having read exactly one of her novels, so take my sweeping literary assessment with whatever grain of salt you deem appropriate. That novel was Verity, which I found sort of fun but ultimately demeaning in the way it pits women against one another and treats that cruelty as the engine of the story. I am a bit shocked to say that Michael Showalter’s Verity adaptation manages to elevate the best parts of Hoover’s work, even if he ultimately succumbs to the same misogynistic tendencies of the source material.
Verity, at the very least, is campy fun. Dakota Johnson (Lowen), Josh Hartnett (Jeremy), and Anne Hathaway (Verity) all bring an exuberance of melodrama to a generally trite thriller that falters under the softest of gazes; think about the plot for more than a few seconds and the whole thing starts to fall apart. Johnson is particularly wonderful in her role as the audience surrogate, tasked with uncovering the truth behind the Crawford family tragedy that resulted in Verity’s catatonic state and the death of Verity and Jeremy’s daughter.
Johnson engages in a superfluous amount of sweater acting (YouTube: John Early Sweater Acting to see what I mean), and her gorgeous, distant affect is perfect for the source material. To Showalter’s credit, he seems to be keenly aware of the film he is trying to make, constantly experimenting with humor that neatly makes fun of the world we are asked to inhabit. One of the most memorable line reads of the year is Dakota Johnson, overlooking an obviously frozen lake where the tragic death of Jeremy’s daughter took place, asking, “Is that a field?” with genuine sincerity.
Anne Hathaway similarly finds a ton of joy in this campy performance. Throwing on an unidentifiable accent is the right choice when she only seems to exist as a voiceover for the manuscript Lowen is reading (and a handful of flashback sequences). Hathaway does a hell of a lot with a hell of a little, and she proves time and time again that she can make even the corniest of moments feel full of bravado.
It’s just a shame that the film is so faithful to the source material. On its face, this is a pseudo-rom-com thriller, but dig a little deeper and it feels a hell of a lot more like toxic female wish fulfillment, where Lowen is presented as rightfully manipulating her way into the arms of a #GoodMan and vanquishes the evil witch who never appreciated him.
The third act remains as messy as the book, with too many twists that are simply unearned. Hoover fails at recontextualizing the story because she seems unwilling to make the audience even remotely uncomfortable. Showalter’s hands are tied, and I appreciate the ways he is able to improve the material presented to him (there is even horror scene that felt straight out of Bring Her Back), but that ultimately leaves you wanting the truly unhinged, no-holds-barred adaptation that exists only in subtle glimpses. Allow the audience to feel uncomfortable. Present Lowen or Jeremy as the true master manipulator, instead of ending on a largely inoffensive final scene. Verity, instead, only knows how to leave you frustrated with what could have been.