In a different, ideal and distant world, Verity would have been a great thriller The protagonists of the film, now in theaters, are Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett

Collen Hoover's cultural hegemony continues. From 2024 to today, starting from the controversial It Ends With Us, four of the writer's books have been adapted and it cannot be ruled out that others may be transposed. After Reminders of Him released in March and Regretting You released at the end of 2025, it's time for Verity, directed by Michael Showalter, the story of a love and lethal triangle with Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett and Anne Hathaway.

Verity, plot and review of the film based on the book by Collen Hoover

Angering against Verity is useless. Those who know the writer know very well what to expect, and the same can be said of a spectator or spectator who is faced with an entertaining and disengaged pastime with which to spend time at the cinema or on the couch on a gloomy autumn afternoon. What is regrettable, however, when it is not really funny or angry, is the naivety of some choices made by Showalter that ridicule an already artificial and unbelievable narrative. There are superimposed images that are a punch in the eye and phrases that flow on the screen that tend to ruin the intriguing part of the film, namely the plot. The story of a writer who, sick and unable to write, is replaced by a colleague who moves to her home to finish her work, discovering unspeakable secrets and embarking on an affair with the woman's husband.

What doesn't work and what did we like about the movie at the cinema

This excessive vehemence is applied to two other aspects that weigh down the erotic thriller (which would like to be). There is Volker Bertelmann's soundtrack, which is overly emphasized and even epic in some places, as if he was not very clear about the type of story that accompanies it. And there is the acting of the cast, in particular the two actresses, who risk becoming a parody of the characters they are called to play. Dakota Johnson repeatedly puts her hands to her mouth to highlight some form of horror, at other times to show surprise, while her colleague Hathaway is forced to impersonate a sadistic and Machiavellian writer who takes on the typical grimachies of a villain. The characters, like this, are trapped in clichés and are unable to show complexity and nuance.

But if you forget all this, or better yet, you deliberately decide to go over it, the film may intrigue you because of what it brings into play in terms of reality and interpretations of the latter, on what manipulation is and how it coincides, or not, with sincerity. The direction in which the conclusion of the film wants to lead is exactly this ambiguity: do we know how to distinguish what is true and what is not, especially if we read it on the printed page? A reflection that is even too complex for the context of Verity and which for this reason remains on the surface, leaving one with the curiosity to imagine what this story would have been like if it had been better studied and scripted.