Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios
Cut from the same mold as last year’s sensation-of-the-moment “The Housemaid” comes another erotic thriller adapted from a bestselling novel, this time from the mind of Colleen Hoover. It’s hard not to look at “Verity” through the lens of Paul Feig’s movie from last year. There are two women and a hunk at the center, an isolated mansion buried deep in the wilderness, simmering sexual tension, someone who clearly isn’t telling the truth and enough lustful desire to make everyone involved reconsider a few life choices. Sadly, “Verity” might have all the necessary ingredients, but it lacks the fun and campy energy needed to get this kind of movie over the finish line. Instead, it grinds its gears, going in circles until arriving at a ham-fisted finale you can see coming a mile away, without much flavor or sauce along the way, try as this talented ensemble might.
If the commercial success of “The Housemaid” proved anything, it’s that audiences are clamoring for the cinematic equivalent of a sexy, sweltering beach read. Give us the tall, handsome glass of water. Give us the vulnerable young woman pining after him. Give us the affair both parties know is a terrible idea but plunge into anyway. Screenwriter Nick Antosca and director Michael Showalter want to understand the assignment and try to wrap those pleasures inside a blissfully silly psychological thriller, but “Verity” keeps winding itself tighter without finding anywhere particularly satisfying to go. By the time it arrives at a final scene involving a very popular YouTube talk show, the biggest shock was hearing myself and most of the theater laughing at the sheer absurdity of its inclusion.
Channeling some of the aura of her “Fifty Shades” heyday, Dakota Johnson tries to bring some heft to Lowen, a struggling writer still reeling from the recent death of her mother when she is approached with the gig of a lifetime. She’s been asked to finish a series of novels by renowned author Verity Crawford, played by Anne Hathaway, somehow appearing in her fourth movie this year. Lowen initially turns down the offer to ghostwrite the remaining books, but there’s something about Verity’s husband Jeremy, played by ’90s heartthrob Josh Hartnett, that she can’t quite say no to.
Before long, Lowen is whisked off to Vermont, where she holes up inside the Crawford home to comb through Verity’s notes and outlines and get inside the mind of the author whose work she’s being asked to inhabit. She had been told that Verity was involved in a car accident, but upon arriving, she discovers her condition is much more severe. Verity cannot move or speak and requires around-the-clock care from a nurse, played by Irina Dvorovenko in a mostly thankless role. Lowen’s uneasiness only intensifies when she stumbles upon an unpublished autobiographical manuscript that contains, naturally, a collection of dark and increasingly disturbing secrets.
You’d think all of this was building toward a shocking revelation, or at least something juicy enough to justify the elaborate setup, but “Verity” instead begins to meander through characters who rarely stop to interrogate the increasingly bizarre reality around them. I’m not suggesting a movie like this needs to strive for realism. Half the fun should come from surrendering to its ridiculousness. The problem is that “Verity” wants us to question everything while giving Lowen surprisingly little curiosity of her own. As doubts begin mounting about Verity’s condition, Lowen barely investigates beyond a few cursory Google searches, leaving the audience several steps ahead of a protagonist who should be driving the mystery forward.
That disconnect becomes increasingly difficult to ignore because the more “Verity” untangles its mystery, the more unhinged and strangely unengaging it becomes. Rather than escalating the tension, the movie devolves into a series of smaller revelations and ominous incidents that rarely accumulate into anything substantial. Then, during its final stretch, Lowen discovers yet another manuscript that essentially asks us to reconsider much of what we have just watched. A twist like that should pull the rug out from under the audience.
That might be easier to forgive if “Verity” delivered on its erotic half, but even the intimate moments between its characters lack chemistry and luster. Johnson and Hartnett are certainly attractive enough to sell the fantasy, yet their attraction rarely feels dangerous, irresistible or even particularly sweaty. For a movie built around forbidden desire, buried secrets and beautiful people behaving badly, “Verity” is oddly restrained when it should be letting its hair down. Say what you want about “Fifty Shades of Grey,” but at least its actors occasionally looked like they were caught up in the moment.
There’s plenty of tomfoolery here, just not the fun kind. “Verity” has the bodies, the mansion, the secrets and the sex, but it never figures out how to turn those ingredients into something genuinely seductive or deliciously trashy. An erotic thriller can survive being ridiculous. What it cannot survive is being boring.
VERITY is now playing in theaters.