Colleen Hoover is a figure who, nowadays, always seems to have her name in bright lights. Whether it’s her extreme popularity on ‘book-tok’ or the numerous film and TV adaptations of her work, you’ve probably heard of her at the very least. In the past few years, three of her books, It Ends With Us, Regretting You, and Reminders of Him have graced the big screen, none of which have made a particularly lasting impact. It Ends With Us was a film that managed to drag every woman in their 40s to the cinema, which is a great feat, but it would have helped if the film was actually any good. It was just your average toxic romance film, and beyond its admirable cry out to women to not stand for domestic abuse, it was quite uninspired in the way it delivered those ideas. This is mainly due to Hoover’s twistily written plots that are heavily reliant on shock value and feel quite cheap, as a result. I did not see Reminders of Him, mostly down to the fact I had to sit through Regretting You last year. Although this was not a romance that applied to middle-aged women, it targeted the next worst thing: teenage love. Oozing with schmaltz, daft plot threads and poor acting, this made me pretty much swear off watching anything from Hoover that seemed in a similar vein. With her now fourth film adaptation, Verity, I really hoped I would get something different. Whilst this is certainly not a typical romance, and utilises a lot of psychosexual thriller aspects, this feels nothing more than a churned-out piece of Hoover’s work, preying on those that know her name to go and see it. Save for some decent acting and mild thrills, it is poorly written, terribly paced and definitely not worthy of your time and money.

Verity follows Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), an author living in New York who is not quite getting the traction with her writing that she wants. Although published, she does not have many fans and is yet to have a proper big break. After a chance encounter with a rather handsome man (Josh Hartnett), whom she immediately fawns over, Lowen finds herself a gig that could set her up for life. This man she meets reveals himself to be Jeremy Crawford, husband of extremely popular crime writer Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway). After a near-fatal car accident, Verity has been left in a catatonic state, meaning that she is not in a state to continue her work. Jeremy offers Lowen the opportunity to ghost-write her work whilst she recovers, so that fans of her work will not think that Verity’s ongoing series is over. After driving a hard bargain, Lowen accepts and comes to live at the Crawford residence, in order to get the most out of Verity’s brainstorming ideas that she has hidden away. Verity’s writing has often been very dark, generally coming from the perspective of villains and quite jarring characters. As Lowen searches through Verity’s things, she finds increasingly worrying manuscripts and ideas that make her wary of Verity, and whether she actually is in the state she seems.

The twisty nature of stories like this can either work extremely well, or it can blow up in the film’s face completely. Of course, I will not be revealing the twists at all, but they fall into two camps. Firstly, some are so predictable that you wonder why it was even a twist in the first place, and secondly, they are so implausible that you cannot help but just laugh. The latter situation is what I cite when I say Hoover’s work has been criticised for its shock value, with little room for reasoning. I have heard that the book delivers these elements a bit better, and Hoover herself was not a screenwriter for this, so I will give her the benefit of the doubt. But it is a cornerstone of writing a narrative that you must write with the idea of ‘this happens because of this’ rather than ‘this happens, and surprise, this happens too’. Cause and effect is writing 101, and it feels like it is completely missed with some of the twisty elements in this film. How this Crawford family even functions in day-to-day life is beyond me, due to the complete stupidity of these characters. I have to be vague for fear of spoilers, but I was not satisfied with a single one of these twists, and that does not bode well when it feels written with the intention to shock you with its twists. The other emotion this film tries to evoke in you is a thrill, and there are at least some elements of that. There are even some scenes that have a horror nature to them, cheap jump scares and all, that are not made incredibly well, but they can be at least functionally effective. Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between, and with this fact in tandem with its subpar twists, you are left with a film that spins its wheels and does not feel like it is going anywhere interesting. It is honestly quite boring at times, recycling the same scenes of Jeremy and Lowen bonding, building up their obvious connection, and little else. Once all its ideas have come and gone, the film just ends, giving no satisfying climax to natter about after the film and instead just giving an unforgivable last-minute twist that really cements this film’s nature. It has nothing intelligent to offer with its script, just poor attempts at creating a reaction for the audience that feel tremendously hollow.

I noted a positive of this film at least being that some of the acting was solid, and by that I mostly mean Anne Hathaway. She is not in this film a hell of a lot, even considering she is in the titular role, but she certainly works with what she has. Her acting is so perceptibly good, it drags you out of the coma that the film puts you in for most of its runtime. Hartnett is fine and does a good enough job, but Dakota Johnson just does not seem like she wants to be here. She is known for her wooden style, but when you are trying to get a reaction out of the audience due to the intensity of a situation, she drags that intensity down consistently by seeming unbothered. As with everybody in the film, it certainly does not help that a great deal of the lines she has to say are terrible, and there is no way anybody could make them sound natural. Another reason for these mismatched performances could definitely stem from the direction by Michael Showalter, which is noticeably unnoticeable. By that, I mean there is no style to it, no real vibe given off by this film, and it just feels like people talking in rooms, occasionally making out and then revealing some horrific things. There is no flow to the scenes in the film, stumbling from one to another and crawling towards the next ‘gotcha’ twist moment. It is all executed with a lack of conviction, half-heartedly running you through the story and lacking any sort of way to hook the audience. That is the essence of sub-par direction: a film that just feels like actors told to do their job, and then call it a day. Showalter offers nothing convincing in Verity that would make me think he did more than just that.

Verity is a poor adaptation of what is considered one of Colleen Hoover’s more interesting novels, damning it to the fate of an unoriginal twisty thriller that thinks it is more intelligent than it is. Though this is not really my sort of thing, I love the actors in this and thought they might have brought something to offer. I accepted that Hoover’s stories were not for me, but from the trailer, this just seemed different. However, it fails to differentiate itself from similar sorts of films, teeming with unoriginality and not giving any reason to keep you engaged. I have seen a lot of people compare this to The Housemaid, and although I see that comparison, I think that film at least had a bit more to it. For one, it was daft, and it seemed to be aware of that fact, Amanda Seyfried in particular giving a hysterically camp performance. It also had infectious sexiness to it that Verity just completely lacks, and even if The Housemaid had a dumb, twisty nature too, it at least had those other elements that made it serviceable. Verity just does not have anywhere near enough going for it, and I cannot see anybody watching this and not feeling disappointed.