Verity: When Romance Author Becomes Thriller Villain, Hollywood Gets Lost

It began with a coffee mug that read ‘I Love Colleen Hoover’, which later turned out to be a prop for a scene where Dakota Johnson pretends to be a psychic. The mug was the only thing in the frame that actually had a clear narrative purpose.

The film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s self‑published psychological thriller 'Verity' stars Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway, and the plot is so tangled it makes a pretzel look simple. By the time the credits roll, the audience is left wondering whether the story was meant to be a thriller or a very long, very confusing romantic comedy.

Colleen Hoover wrote 16 romance novels before pivoting to thriller; she self‑published 'Verity' on her own imprint, hoping to prove she could write anything. The novel’s success was a surprise, but the film’s failure proves that a bestseller doesn’t always translate to a blockbuster.

The director, Michael Showalter, previously helmed 'The Idea of You', a film that also suffered from a tone that was harder to pin down than a cat on a hot grill. In 'Verity', he appears to have taken the same approach, but with a script that feels like it was written in a coffee shop during a rainstorm.

The film follows a young author who inherits a house and discovers a manuscript that could destroy her career. The premise is intriguing, but the execution is as coherent as a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces.

Johnson’s attempt at a brooding author is as subtle as a neon sign in a blackout, and her dialogue often sounds like a line taken out of a script for a daytime soap opera that was accidentally sent to a horror movie.

Hathaway’s character is supposed to be a supportive co‑author, but she ends up as a one‑line villain who appears only to deliver a punchline that lands at a different angle than the audience expects.

The film moves slower than a snail in a traffic jam, with a soundtrack that could have been written by a bored office worker. Even the most die‑hard fans of cinematic suspense are left scrolling through their phones to find something that has actual pacing.

Critics called it listless, and the audience left the theater with their popcorn still in their hands. The reviews are so unanimous that even the critics have started to wonder if the film was made in a vacuum.

The trailer was shot on a budget that would fit a college project, but the producers promised 'thrills' that never came. The marketing team seems to have taken a page from the novel’s plot: nothing is what it seems, and nothing actually satisfies.

Hoover has decided to stick to romance, but she might consider writing a sequel called 'Verity: The Sequel to the Sequel', just to keep the confusion going. If that happens, Hollywood will finally have a film that explains why the original was so confusing.

In the end, 'Verity' proves that when you mix romance, a self‑published thriller, and two A‑list actresses, the result is a cinematic paradox that will haunt your dreams for about 90 minutes.