{"id":15116,"date":"2026-10-03T22:13:57","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T02:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=15116"},"modified":"2026-10-03T22:14:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T02:14:29","slug":"verity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/10\/03\/verity\/","title":{"rendered":"Verity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Verity <\/strong>(2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amazon MGM\/Suspense-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 117 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (sexual content, some nudity, language, violence and bloody images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Michael Showalter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Nick Antosca\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Volker Bertelmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jim Frohna\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 2, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Brady Wagner, Irina Dvorovenko.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0The new thriller Verity<\/strong>, based on the best seller by Colleen Hoover, is a throwback to the erotic thrillers of the 90s (e.g. Basic Instinct). It walks the fine line between art and trash never really picking one or the other. It\u2019s this wishy-washiness, combined with its high predictability level, that holds it back. It could have been so much better. Still, I think it\u2019s going to be a hit.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) stars as Lowen Ashleigh, an up-and-coming writer who gets hired to help a best-selling author to finish her latest novel. Verity Crawford (Hathaway, The Devil Wears Prada 2), who specializes in novels about villainous characters, is catatonic after a car accident, a supposed suicide attempt after the accidental drowning death of her young daughter. Her husband Jeremy (Hartnett, Trap) specifically wants Lowen because Verity read one of her books and loved it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Lowen takes the gig and moves into the family\u2019s lakeside home with Jeremy and his son Crew (Wagner), the dead girl\u2019s twin brother. There\u2019s also a home health aide (ballet dancer Dvorovenko) who looks after Verity by day. Lowen immediately gets to work sorting through Verity\u2019s extensive notes planning how to tell another writer\u2019s story. She finds a flash drive stashed in a box on Verity\u2019s desk. On it is her autobiography. The story she tells is quite disturbing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0All may not be as it seems in the Crawford home. Despite her inability to move or speak, Lowen thinks Verity is watching her when nobody\u2019s looking. It\u2019s especially awkward because she starts to develop feelings for Jeremy. It leads to \u201cThe Scene Everybody Will Be Talking About for Years\u201d. It involves Dakota in a bathtub fantasizing about Jeremy. I\u2019ll say no more.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Michael Showalter (The Big Sick), Verity<\/strong> is slick and sleek yet empty. It\u2019s all surface and no substance. The symbolism of the name Verity (it means \u201ctruth\u201d) is too obvious. The film centers on characters who may or may not be telling the truth about how they got here. Who are we supposed to believe? Is Verity or Jeremy the master manipulator? And what about Lowen? What\u2019s her story? Her mother recently died of cancer. Really? Is there more to it than that? Showalter plays mind games with the audience. But here\u2019s the thing. Most of us will already know that going in. We\u2019re ready for every twist of the plot. The film isn\u2019t as tricky as it thinks it is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Moreover, Verity<\/strong> is disappointingly predictable. The only ones that\u2019ll be surprised by it are those who don\u2019t see too many movies. I had it all figured out early on. I was just waiting for that last \u201csurprise\u201d twist, the one that\u2019s meant to elicit a collective gasp from the audience. It\u2019ll probably work on some viewers, but it didn\u2019t work on Movie Guy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The cast, on the other hand, is top tier. Hathaway, right now the busiest lady in show business, shows us a darker side. Verity\u2019s gift as an author is the ability to get inside the mind of villainous people. She maintains a pleasant fa\u00e7ade in interviews or in front of her family, but there\u2019s something dark beneath the surface. The fa\u00e7ade cracks after her children are born. It\u2019s her insecurity coming to light. It\u2019s a finely nuanced performance. Johnson keeps getting better and better as an actress. She has qualities of both parents, Melanie Griffith\u2019s ability to radiate innocence and Don Johnson\u2019s natural fit into the film noir world. As Lowen, you\u2019re never quite sure what\u2019s going on in her mind. With this role, I do believe Hartnett has become an A-list actor. He has a knack for playing seemingly ordinary characters who might not be ordinary.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t mind Verity<\/strong> even though it\u2019s flawed. It\u2019s never actually boring. It oozes with class yet isn\u2019t afraid to get its hands dirty. It has sex and nudity like any respectable erotic thriller should. It has a talented and attractive cast. It has a glossy look to it. The Crawford home is amazing. But like I said, it\u2019s just too predictable. However, you should probably take that with a grain of salt. I\u2019m hardly surprised by movies anymore. Nine times out of ten I can figure them out before the big reveal. Verity<\/strong> is for audiences looking for a fun ride of a thriller. It\u2019s that to some degree. Like I said, it\u2019s going to do well.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Verity (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amazon MGM\/Suspense-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 117 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (sexual content, some nudity, language, violence and bloody images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Michael Showalter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Nick Antosca\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Volker Bertelmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jim Frohna\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 2, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Brady Wagner, Irina Dvorovenko. Rating: ** \u00bd \u00a0The new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15117,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Verity-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15120,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15116\/revisions\/15120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}