Review of 'VERITY' — Sometimes what works on the pages of a book, doesn't work on film

After the commercial success of It Ends With Us (2024), film studios launched multiple projects that adapted other literary works by Colleen Hoover.

Among them, the one that brings us here today: Verity.

The psychosexual thriller, backed by Amazon MGM Studios, adapts Hoover's novel of the same name, published independently in 2018 and becoming a best-selling phenomenon. In 2021 it was acquired by Grand Central Publishing, and in 2023 alone, it sold more than a million copies.

With these two backgrounds and a main cast made up of Anne Hathaway (The Odyssey), Dakota Johnson (Materialists) y Josh Hartnett (Trap), what could go wrong?

Much ado about nothing…

The twisted thriller that made Hoover famous, fails to transfer the story from the page to the screen. Thriller and erotic, almost nothing. The film directed by Michael Showalter (The Idea of You, serie The Dropout) with a hyphen Nick Antosca (Channel Zero, The Act), forgot the spark at home.

The public has already shown that they love to see these types of stories, with other projects of the genre such as the case of Saltburn, Babygirl, The Housemaid, Gone Girlamong others, but When you lack mischief and risk, and you only stay on the surface of things, the result will lack shine..

In Verity: The shadow of a deceptionfor its title in our region, we follow Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson), a novelist with financial difficulties who is hired as a ghostwriter to finish the latest book by bestselling author Verity Crawford (Hathaway), after an accident leaves her unable to complete it.

While Lowen works on the project, he discovers a disturbing unfinished autobiographical manuscript that raises questions about the mental stability of Verity, who writes twisted confessions about her husband, Jeremy (Hartnett), and their children. Lowen soon finds it difficult to distinguish between fiction and reality.

For the leading trio, the performances offered in Verityrepresent a regression from what we have become accustomed to seeing from them; Hathaway is in one of the best – and busiest – moments of her career. This year alone he starred in two of the biggest box office hits of 2026, The Devil Wears Prada 2 y The Odysseyin addition to Mother Mary y The End of Oak Streetwhere he also stood out with leading roles. To be fair to the actress, she is the least of the problems in this situation.

After convincing roles in films such as Materialists y SplitsvilleJohnson gives a bland performance that reminds us of his time in the trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey; while Hartnett as Jeremy is totally forgettable.

Hoover's novel is successful because it is not afraid of the absurd. For the movie on the other hand, It was decided to approach the story from a dull and serious point of view. Maybe if he hadn't been afraid to play and have fun with the ridiculous, the result would have been different. At times, it seems that Showalter and Antosca did not know what to keep from Hoover's novel and what to discard, which characters to leave out and which to delve into.

And that's how Verity never comes out of the dead end; It moves without brio while the cast offers tepid performances, when the film demands a more intense and exaggerated approach.

I will always urge the viewer to go to movie theaters to see a film and form their own opinion. Having said this:

It's true what they say: sometimes what works on paper doesn't always work on the big screen.

See you in the cinemas.

QUALIFICATION:

TECHNICAL SHEET:

Original title: Verity
Title in our region: Verity: The shadow of a deception
Director: Michael Showalter
Screenwriter: Nick Antosca
List: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Brady Wagner, Irina Dvorovenko
Producers: Nick Antosca, Alex Hedlund, Michael Showalter, Jordana Mollick, Anne Hathaway, Colleen Hoover, Stacey Sher
Executive producers: Dakota Johnson, Lauren Levine, Kerry Orent
Soundtrack: Volker Bertelmann
Director of photography: Jim Frohna
Edition: Jay Cassidy
Classification: B15
Duration: 1h 57min
Distributor: Sony Pictures, Amazon MGM Studios
Cinema release: October 1

Trailer: