Truth or Consequences: VERITY

Verity, like other Colleen Hoover adaptations, is a twisty melodrama with the dynamics so heightened you get a little dizzy from the altitude sickness. But somehow taking the emphasis off of damaged lovers’ romances, like in It Ends with Us or Regretting You, and into a more straightforward sexy thriller makes for a more effective result. The long simmering tensions bubbling up into straight-faced delirium make sense in this context. It also gives its cast something to hide. This works better to subsume the wildest twists behind doubts and deceptions until the last possible moment. Dakota Johnson stars as a young author hired to sign a non-disclosure agreement and help a troubled bestselling novelist finish her popular series. Anne Hathaway plays the wealthy writer in a deceptive double role in slippery flashbacks and a struggling present. Josh Hartnett is her husband, a nice, supportive guy. Is that suspicious in a movie like this? Johnson moves into their home to sort through outlines and notes and, no surprise, starts formulating her own opinions about the couple’s dynamic as she’s learns about their past and gets entangled in their futures. 

The material makes good use of its cast’s strengths. Johnson, who here has a fine inquisitive blankness to her “resting bored face,” spends most of the movie very slowly reading a secret manuscript that may be a hidden confession to Terrible Deeds, and then wandering the mansion talking to its inhabitants. That each chapter ends on shocking revelations does little to speed her to the end. It’s a sensible chapter a day for this one, the better to string the movie along. It gives Hathaway time to play a wide range of modes, from fresh flirt, to postpartum psychosis, to wounded wife. And Hartnett keeps his chemistry with each woman on a low boil to keep you guessing about his ultimate goal. That the movie is self-consciously playing with the truth and perspective, from the title on down, makes it the kind of smart that people who don’t usually think too hard will find provocative. The rest of us can just vibe with the smooth surfaces’ appeal coaxed along by workmanlike direction and a screenplay that has just the right balance of dread and silliness. From the pretty people to the 80’s-style fonts to the lumbering ominous pace to the trip-wire twists to the fact that all of the bestselling author’s books are designed to look exactly like Hoover’s, it’s a pleasantly unpleasant pulp.