Verity starts off with one of the better meet-cutes in recent times, mostly because it involves someone seemingly exploding off screen and dousing our heroine in blood. Sadly it's not a crossover with the roof-diving zombies from the recent Resident Evil movie, and like so many of the possibilities for this movie to go completely nuts, the promise of a zombie attack gradually slips away. Or does it?
Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) is a struggling New York author. Well, not that struggling - she's at least been published - but her book readings are sparsely attended and her agent seems more interested in sleeping with her than nurturing her career. Then she's summoned to a secret meeting where the only requirement is that she dress up. Sure hope a bike messenger doesn't get hit by a car right in front of her splashing her with blood!
Luckily a mysterious stranger (Josh Hartnett) is there to guide her into a men's room to help her wash off, lend her his shirt, and exchange some awkward deadpan dialogue (he fished his dead daughter out of a lake; her mother died last week). Then when she gets to the meeting, who should be on the other side of the boardroom desk but... a bunch of characters we've never seen before. And yes, the mysterious stranger, now wearing a new shirt.
Turns out this meeting is to offer Lowen the chance of a lifetime. Superstar author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) is no longer able to complete a series of contracted novels, and they - well, her husband Jeremy, AKA the mysterious stranger - think she's the one for the job. It's life-changing money, Jeremy is keen, there's already a bunch of notes to work from; how could she say no?
As all the notes are at Verity's messy home office in their luxury house in the middle of nowhere (Vermont), Lowen decides to stay with Jeremy and their son Crew while she gets ready to take over the series. There she discovers that after a hushed-up accident Verity is basically a vegetable, unable to walk or move or speak. What she is able to do is appear in occasional creepy flashes and freak Lowen out. But that's clearly just her imagination, right? After all, she's starting to get closer and closer to Jeremy, no wonder she's starting to feel a little guilty.
While all this is a lot, it's not really all that dramatic. Enter a mysterious manuscript with Verity's name on it that purports to be her autobiography, in which she reveals that the reason why she's so good at writing depraved monsters - supposedly her unique selling point as an author is that she writes from the villain's POV - is because (gasp) she actually is one! Could there be more to the death of Crew's twin sister a few months before the accident that turned Verity into a vegetable than meets the eye?
As a mystery, this is a film where many of the red herrings and weird moments turn out to be more interesting than what really happens, even when what really happens is pretty out there. Worse, the story (it's based on a novel by Collen Hoover) doesn't stick the landing; it's the kind of film where you suddenly realise you've already seen the big climax, and all that's left now is a slow fizzling out.
On the plus side, Hathaway (appearing mostly in flashback) is bringing her A game as a possibly murderous sexpot, while Johnson is sadly too sharp to be playing a character this dimwitted but is still happy to go with it. Hartnett seems to be slowly turning into Charles Bronson, but he knows what's required and doesn't let the team down either.
Verity is a collection of parts that should work - a promising set-up, the cast, a few sexy scenes, a couple of decent jokes, exactly two moments that had audience members shrieking - but it never quite comes together. There's even some interesting ideas in here: is it worse to be someone who flamboyantly and seductively promotes evil, or someone who acts good and does evil out of sight?
The steam in this steamy thriller fades well before the end; at least you'll think twice in future about licking a spread-covered knife.
- Anthony Morris
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