Review | Verity

I watched Verity last night, and all I could think about was that this is one of the rare times a book-to-screen adaptation has been so close to the original. The accuracy is insane!!!

I read the book when it first came out, before all the Colleen Hoover online discourse and her being cancelled, and gave it a 3/5 at the time. Now that I’ve watched the movie, I’d probably give it the same rating, mainly for how well they adapted the book.

Verity follows Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer who is hired to ghostwrite for bestselling author Verity Crawford, who can’t finish her series after an accident. Lowen discovers a disturbing autobiographical manuscript hidden in Verity’s house, and she starts questioning everything she knows about the Crawford family, about Verity and what really happened.

Since I already knew the entire plot, I obviously wasn’t surprised or mind-blown by the twists. The only things that genuinely got me were a few of the jump scares.

But let’s talk about the cinema cause damn! I feel like most people there didn’t know the plot at all, because there were so many moments when almost the entire cinema audibly gasped.

Honestly, it was kind of amazing to be in a room where people were experiencing these twists for the first time ever. I already knew what was coming and was basically sitting there watching everyone else lose their minds.

The Vermont winter setting was also beautiful and matched the book’s atmosphere so well. Everything felt cold, eerie and unsettling in exactly the right way.

And the casting?? Great!

Dakota Johnson as Lowen, Anne Hathaway as Verity and Josh Hartnett as Jeremy all fit their characters really well, especially Dakota and Anne, who have done quite a few book-to-screen adaptations. Even the little boy who plays Crew was so cute!

I also really liked the opening credits with the movie title. I don’t know why, but it just worked.

Special shoutout to Alex Cooper from Call Her Daddy and Sean Evans from Hot Ones for their cameos. They were genuinely so fun to see.

One thing I didn’t really like was Lowen vaping?? I genuinely can’t remember that being a thing in the book, and it felt like such an unnecessary addition.

Plus, some of Dakota’s dialogue was so funny that it sometimes felt less like Lowen and more like Dakota herself. Especially when she said she has a “resting bored face.” I was like… yeah, that feels like Dakota talking.

The debrief after the movie was also so fun because everyone was discussing the ending and trying to figure out what they thought had actually happened.
Overall, I thought the book was alright, and the movie was alright. It’s dark, disturbing and comes with a lot of trigger warnings. I probably wouldn’t watch it again because knowing all the twists takes away a lot of the suspense.

But if you haven’t read the book, I actually think you’ll enjoy the movie much more. Go in blind, don’t Google anything and experience the chaos with everyone else.