Hired to be a ghostwriter for renowned author Verity Crawford, Lowen Ashleigh's assignment takes a dark turn when she discovers chilling autobiographical notes. As she wrestles with disturbing and twisted confessions about Verity's husband, she soon finds it hard to separate fiction from reality, manipulation from attraction, and opportunity from obsession.
Director: Michael Showalter
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Brady Wagner
Release Date: October 2, 2026
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Rated R for sexual content, some nudity, language, violence and bloody images.
Runtime: 1h 54m
Review:
Verity is a glossy psycho thriller that does just enough to elevate the material above Lifetime quality, thanks mainly to a vamping Hathaway, with the story’s series of twists playing out predictably. Michael Showalter brings a steady hand behind the camera, delivering a visually slick film that takes full advantage of its locale and good-looking cast. It’s almost too sleek of a film since there’s an artificial air to everything thrown onscreen which gives the entire thing utterly detached from reality. It’s hard to blame Showalter much since the script is peppered with stiff, unnatural lines of dialogue that feel most like old school Cinemax than anything else. If the story had just gone all in with its tawdry subject matter and fully embraced it, silliness and all, the film would have worked better as a guilty pleasure. As is, Anne Hathaway is the only one of the cast who understood the assignment by leaning into the cartoonish nature of the character. Hathaway chews up every bit of non-comatose screentime she gets and it leaves you wishing the film gave her more time to brood as a mother who hates every aspect of it. Sadly, those moments come and go far too quickly with Dakota Johnson being asked to carry the lion’s share of the load. Johnson can deliver some decent performances with good material, but this script offers up a painfully one dimensional and bland character which sets her back to her default setting of the human embodiment of “meh.” There are a few bits of background thrown around at the beginning of the film but after that her character isn’t given any sort of tangible depth or texture to make you care about her which makes her the least interesting person onscreen. Josh Hartnett fares slightly better since he’s given a tad more to work with but there are reveals which are telegraphed from a mile away. The climax plays out in a similar fashion as everything you expect to happen, but instead of eliciting gasp they provide unintentional laughter. The ending is supposed to be shocking, but it delivered in such a blasé manner that it leaves you with more of a collective shrug than a visceral thrill that leaves you begging for another entry, which is set up at the end. Verity ends up being a barely passable erotic thriller that thinks it’s far more clever than it actually is.
C-
