Verity

Verity
Starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Cordova
Directed by Michael Showalter

It's very interesting in one week two movies come out: "Verity" and "Digger," where one debuted at number one with an impressive worldwide gross, and the other barely made a dent, all due to preconceived notions. "Digger" was lambasted by critics because they found the satirical work too pretentious, while audiences went in droves to see the new Colleen Hoover-adapted movie "Verity." Personally, they got things mixed up - "Digger" wasn't pretentious, but "Verity" literally bled pretentiousness from the first scene on, culminating in such a convoluted ending it felt like Hoover herself was patting herself on the back for such a unique twist that, indeed, isn't unique at all.

Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) is a successful novelist best known for her series where the main character is the villain, giving a unique spin on the villain trope. She lives in luxury with her husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) and their two kids, but after a serious of unfortunate events occur, one of their children is dead, and Verity is confined to a wheelchair, essentially a vegetable. Struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) is hired by Jeremy to ghost-write Verity's books because he said Verity loved her work, and Lowen moves into their home. She uncovers Verity's secret autobiography that shatters her worldview and leads her to wonder what is really truth, and what's really lies.

"Verity" is a veritable chamber piece of self-aggrandizing, with a story so full of gaslighting gurgling gagging you can't help but vomit up annoyance. While it seems erstwhile to center a movie where you don't know what's true and not, doing it in this way only serves to puff up Hoover's already over-inflated ego, another in a series of dumbed-down airport novel stories brought to the big screen. I was personally more interested in this one after seeing the trailer, thinking it'd have more of a horror aspect to it - and I dozed off. It wasn't scary in the slightest, and the casting department made a deathly error in who was cast as who.

Josh Hartnett is fine as Jeremy, a man who never loved Verity's work because they were too negative, and who is devoted to his son and caring for his wife. There's not really else given to his character outside of that, or at least anything I noticed. The issue in casting comes with Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson. In a perfect world, Dakota Johnson would play the invalid Verity while Anne Hathaway would be Lowen, because this movie is a waste of her talent. Note I said her, not theirs, and that's because Dakota Johnson famously doesn't have acting abilities outside of a few choice roles like the "Suspiria" remake and "Bad Times at the El Royale." She's wooden, hollow, and her eyes show no signs of intelligence behind them, as proven in the abysmal "Madame Web" among others. She's a walking billboard, showing no emotion and saying her lines like she's reading them from a teleprompter. 

Conversely, Anne Hathaway is one of this generation's best performers, and she spends most of this film in a catatonic state. The best parts are when we see her in the past, and she looks as elegant as ever, giving a steely, cold, calculated performance. These two roles should've been switched, and maybe there would be some saving to this movie.

The Score: C-