Critic Reviews

Ultimately, Verity is just plain fun. It's bloody, but not so bloody that it would be too much for those wary of horror movies; it has some very spicy scenes, but they never feel gratuitous. It's unlikely to be the best thing anyone's seen this year, but it nevertheless proves that an on-screen adaptation of a dark romance novel one might pick up in an airport (an actual joke in the movie) doesn't have to be a cringe-filled, smutty nightmare.

Of the Colleen Hoover adaptations so far, Verity is easily the best and most stylish of them all. It plays with more sophisticated themes of writing, truth and trust, the complicated nature of the versions of ourselves we put on the page. The unmoored truth is never resolved here, leaving us with the lesson that the only thing certain is uncertainty, and the only person we can’t trust is ourselves. Verity? Hardly.

It’s somehow too clever for its own good but not clever enough.

Verity is a ludicrous psycho-thriller as cold and tart as the wine cocktail that should come free with every ticket. It’s also a film whose enjoyably contrived pleasures, like those of its source material, hinge upon the fact that people are eager for any excuse to look down on a successful woman.

Verity would be a total trashy hoot if it weren’t so damn slow-moving. Shave 20 minutes off its nearly two-hour runtime and you’d have a tight and nasty time waster.

While Verity is ultimately too dull to truly provoke, Hathaway is sharp enough to cut through the mediocre muck surrounding her, giving her sections of the film a winningly wicked wink. She’s reason enough to see the film, even if the rest of it leaves a lot to be desired.

As CoHo adaptations go, it's definitely leading the pack, but it frustratingly stops just shy of plunging into the true darkness that Verity herself ominously warns us about from the very beginning.

The erotic thriller invites you to go along for a wild ride, one where you shrug off moments that, in any other genre, would have you saying, “That would never happen.” It’s an unspoken agreement you make with the filmmaker: you let the absurdity slide for a good time, for the chance to watch characters lose their minds over passion. But Verity is too controlled, too serviceable to commit to the bit.

There does appear to be at least a level of self awareness when it comes to realizing that the sexiness of the film is necessary, as “Verity” relies on two things to succeed: the performances of its leads and how hot everyone is.

Showalter and his cast clearly had a right giggle making this – and, for the most part, you will too.