Dir. Michael Showalter · 2026 · about 2 hours · in cinemas
Lowen Ashleigh is a novelist with good notices and poor sales. After a roadside accident leaves her spattered with blood, a stranger named Jeremy helps her clean up, and she learns he is married to Verity Crawford, a bestselling thriller writer left paralysed and unresponsive after a car crash. Verity's publishers need someone to finish her unfinished series. Lowen takes the job and moves into the lakeside Crawford house. That is the first act, and it is as far as this review goes.
The film adapts Colleen Hoover's 2018 novel, with a screenplay by Nick Antosca, and stars Dakota Johnson as Lowen, Anne Hathaway as Verity and Josh Hartnett as Jeremy. Showalter is better known for comedy, which matters, because most of the argument about this film is about its tone.
This is a critical reading built from published reviews, not a screening report. The reviews I read do not agree, and the disagreement is the interesting part.
"But it's a flat-footed dud, at once overwrought and underplotted"
Guy Lodge, Variety
Lodge's review is the harshest in tone: he finds the film overwrought and thin at the same time, with stars who look indifferent. SlashFilm's Nina Starner goes further with a 2 out of 10, calling the pace slow and the exposition clunky, though she singles out Hathaway as the film's main strength. TheWrap's Amelia Emberwing lands in the middle: she calls it silly, sexy and overstuffed, with an entertaining but uneven core, praises Hartnett's charm and the house as a character, and finds the runtime and the pile of twists a barrier. The Associated Press's Lindsey Bahr is the warmest, treating the Hitchcock-and-Rebecca flavour and the heightened pulp as the point.
The cast gets the credit. SlashFilm calls Hathaway's villainous turn the film's main strength, TheWrap likes Hartnett's "aw shucks" charm for keeping his motives ambiguous and finds Johnson comfortable in a role with limited depth, and the AP enjoys the energy of the trio. TheWrap also praises Jim Frohna's cinematography and the lakeside house, designed by Amy Williams, as a character in its own right, and even Variety concedes the production looks expensive.
The recurring complaint is that the film cannot decide whether it is a serious psychological thriller or a camp melodrama, and so undercuts both. The twists are described as piling up until they lose their force, and the runtime is called out as long for what it holds. Johnson's and Hartnett's roles are described as thinly written.
Pick what you want from a night out and see where the reviews point.
Choose one above.
Verity is in cinemas now. Release dates and availability vary by country, so check your local listings, and wait for a streaming date to be confirmed before assuming one.
Sources: Variety, TheWrap, SlashFilm, Associated Press.