Content Warning: This review will contain spoilers for both the book and movie of Colleen Hoover’s Verity, as well as some adult topics.
Deciding to end a blockbuster psychological horror book-to-screen adaptation with a clip of Verity Crawford (played by Anne Hathaway) doing a Hot Ones interview with Sean Evans is one of the boldest and most ridiculous choices I’ve ever seen. That only scratches the surface of the many problems with Verity (2026).
I was invited to attend a college-aged, free prescreening of Verity through Her Campus on Wednesday, Sept. 30, two full days before the movie’s official in-theater release. The event was extremely enjoyable, as the audience was overwhelmingly female, which made for some great interactive moments during the film’s major twists.
Unfortunately, the exciting environment couldn’t save any aspect of this rollercoaster of a film. Structurally, many of my issues with this film begin with Colleen Hoover’s original book, released in 2018. Verity is marketed as a psychological thriller, as ghostwriter Lowen Asleigh (played by Dakota Johnson) enters into the twisted mind and home of the now-paralyzed, bestselling author Verity Crawford. However, the majority of the book focuses less on the swirling mystery of Verity’s past and present circumstances and more on the sex life of her husband, Jeremy Crawford (played by Josh Hartnett), who was first in love with Verity but begins to fall for Lowen.
Despite the very graphic nature of the majority of the book, what truly annoyed me about the novel was the ending. Hoover employs the strategy of reversing the reader’s beliefs at the very last second with a posthumous letter from Verity, creating what she hopes to be an ambiguous and divisive ending, but instead comes off as lazy, underdeveloped writing.
Going into the early screening, I was hoping that the directors would take advantage of the double-edged sword Hoover attempts to plant and weave it through the inner workings of the film. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The writers remained extremely steadfast to the plot of the novel, with dialogue somehow duller and shallower than Hoover’s. In an attempt to target Gen-Z audiences, the movie strays from the book with Lowen’s drinking, smoking, and pill-popping habits, and includes clips of Verity on popular internet shows such as Call Her Daddy and Hot Ones, which backfires and feels entirely out of place within the context of the film.
Besides the dialogue and modernity issues, the film also suffers from pacing issues, with important plot points feeling extremely rushed and others feeling dragged out. Thankfully for viewers, the movie has considerably fewer graphic sex scenes than the novel. The few it does contain are certainly interesting, including a graphic masturbation scene that ends with Johnson and Hathaway’s characters kissing, with little to no purpose other than attempted psychological horror. As for the acting, Hathaway’s performance was by far the standout of the film, but she suffers from the subpar writing. Johnson and Hartnett feel completely flat throughout the majority of the film, and I found the most enjoyable on-screen presence to be Brady Wagner, who plays Jeremy and Verity’s child.
Verity was a hot mess of a novel to begin with, and one that, unfortunately, could not be improved by its on-screen adaptation.
While I wouldn’t recommend Verity for a serious watch, I do think it’d be enjoyable to critique and watch with friends.
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