Whenever Hollywood clings obsessively to the work of a pop novelist of the dayThe law of averages says subsequent movies can’t be that bad: More than a few John Grisham-centered movies of the ’90s were solid, while “The Notebook” actually had a Nicholas Sparks movie that people remember two decades later. But after four films, we’re still waiting for an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s books that will make clear to the unconverted the immense popularity of her books. “Verity,” a goofy riff on “Rebecca” filtered through a Clinton-era erotic thriller aesthetic, at least has a clearer narrative hook than the various bores of “It Ends With Us,” “Regrets You” and “Reminds Me of Him,” which have grossed more than half a billion dollars combined over the past two years. But it’s a flat-footed dud that’s both over-the-top and under-plotted, and barely supported by A-list stars who seem embarrassed, confused or indifferent to be there.
“Indifferent” mostly applies to Dakota Johnson; the actor’s passive screen presence (“I have a bored face,” he says here, nailing one of the few self-aware lines in Nick Antosca’s script) can be an intriguing asset for the right film. Or even the wrong one: The coolly ironic tone he brought to the “Fifty Shades” trilogy influenced the casting of “Verity,” a relatively scary candidate who would probably love the overall scandalous tone of those films. But no one can attract much attention in this ludicrous tale of writers, ghostwriters and soon-to-be ghostwriters, labeling and boldly revealing their supposed obscurity at every turn: not Johnson, not Josh Hartnett, not the lately inescapable Anne Hathaway, who demands little of herself but is frozen in glassy arrogance.
As for director Michael Showalter, who directed Hathaway to even more vivid effect in the hit romantic comedy “The Idea of You,” “Verity” feels almost perversely ill-suited to his talents. Trained in comedy, he manages the film’s twisted eroticism and high-camp melodramatic lurches so unsteadily that any laughs—and there are more than a few—remain of the unintentional variety. Paul Feig’s audience-focused, ready-for-anything spirit and Amanda Seyfried’s slumming style of play make “The Housemaid” a perfectly serviceable multi-layered lump of dough, while “Verity” is all pretentious, un-lifted veneer — haltingly paced and stilted, never feeling energized by even its characters’ most absurd behavior.
There’s plenty to go around; It begins with the oddly creepy meeting between Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson), a young novelist who’s received praise but no sales to write about, and wily real estate agent Jeremy Crawford (Hartnett). The two were on the same Manhattan street corner when a passing cyclist was hit and killed by a speeding vehicle, prompting blood splatter everywhere as Lowen was on his way to a meeting with his publisher. Bravely helping him clean up at a nearby cafe, Jeremy offers him both his clean white shirt and specially chosen comforting words: “I’ve seen worse… I pulled my eight-year-old daughter’s body out of the lake.”
With this sequence of events, “Verity” may capture our attention, but it quickly loses our faith. Who is doing this? Who says this? Who doesn’t have follow-up questions? And shouldn’t he have had a few more when Lowen walked into the meeting a few minutes later and was reintroduced to Jeremy, who knew who he was all along? Jeremy is revealed to be the husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford (Hathaway), whose most popular thriller series has been left unfinished since a car accident the previous year left her paralyzed and catatonic; His publishers want someone to finish the job, and Lowen fits the bill. Despite her initial misgivings, she accepts the assignment and immediately moves into the Crawford family’s luxurious lakeside home to begin. (Why, exactly? Oh, never mind.)
It’s a sample of the uneasiness you’d expect from a stranger moving in with a family recovering from not one but two recent tragedies – but Lowen’s snooping uncovers a draft of an apparently secret memoir that Verity wrote shortly before the accident, so it’s all worth it. Hathaway’s memoir, narrated in her transatlantic accent, tells the story of how she met Jeremy, how she became a writer, and how postpartum depression compensated for the paradise in their marriage. But all this is not as described by Jeremy, who is more or less making the moves on Lowen.
Who to believe? whose truth the real? And honestly, who really cares either way? After a lot of winter lifestyle porn and prowling through softly carpeted corridors, “Verity” takes more than an hour to reach low-boil, but its turns are second-guessed and double-bluffed, even as Showalter punctuates some exposition with literal thunder in the background. It’s much more muted and disappointing than you’d expect or expect from a movie in which Dakota Johnson calls the wheelchair-bound Anne Hathaway “a selfish Machiavellian jerk,” and it’s never even remotely sexy, despite the efforts of two characters in the back of a limo and a masturbation scene in a rock-hewn bathtub that seems mostly uncomfortable for everyone.
Amy Williams’ production design looks as expensive as the leads, and composer Volker Bertelmann employs some canonical Bernard Herrmann stylings – even more prevalent than Hathaway in films this year. But the film doesn’t deserve even such a hollow imitation, and there’s little to distinguish it from the cheap and cheerful streaming fodder in the genre field. “Words should come directly from the center of the heart,” Verity says at one point about her own writing philosophy. “They should be ugly, honest, bloody and a little scary, but completely exposed.” “Verity” is none of these, except perhaps some of the instinct; If Colleen Hoover’s writing bears any of these qualities, Hollywood is doing a good job of hiding it, by the way.