Dull, Slow, Dreary, and Drippy ‘Verity’ Is Unconvincing Absurd Thriller

Dull, Slow, Dreary, and Drippy ‘Verity’ Is Unconvincing Absurd Thriller

By Lynn Venhaus

Beware the unreliable narrator(s). Not giving any spoilers away, but “Verity” is turgid trash, and toys with truth, trust and too many twists to be a satisfying psychological thriller.

Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), hired to ghostwrite for wildly successful thriller novelist Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), uncovers what appears to be Verity’s autobiographical notes. She wrestles with the confessions about Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) and finds that separating fiction from reality is challenging.

Adapted by screenwriter Nick Antosca from simplistic novelist Colleen Hoover’s manipulative 2018 best-selling sensation, the movie has that same unconvincing plot formula with cliched characters and a left-field rushed conclusion. With a 1 hour, 58-minute run time, it is also slow and dull.

Most egregious is its hollow heroine Lowen, straining credibility because she is played by the blandest leading lady in Hollywood, Dakota Johnson (winner of not one, but two Golden Raspberry “Razzie” Awards for worst actress – “Madame Web” and “Fifty Shades of Grey”). 

Anne Hathaway, in flashback, as successful thriller writer Verity Crawford.

A nepo baby – her parents are Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, she has made some strong indies (“Peanut Butter Falcon” and “Cha Cha Real Smooth” succeeded because she could be lowkey in them). But her deadpan delivery is hard to warm up to, particularly in a supposedly sizzling affair.

Johnson’s monotone indifference is annoying because Lowen is a serious writer (sure, let’s believe this), who is good enough to be published but not read or known. She’s waiting in the wings, eager for her big break, and she has a backstory that’s never fully addressed.

When Lowen is conveniently at an intimate birthday dinner with her employer’s husband, she admits to having “resting bored face.” That’s not a stretch, but most of the dialogue is. And the logic throughout is absurd.

Thrown together, because we must have a forbidden love angle while the catatonic wife, in a wheelchair and bed-ridden, creates an overly emotional detour between Lowen and the handsome man of the house – you see that coming from the ‘meet-grisly-cute.’

Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett as strangers who meet through tragedy.

Oh, how bizarre. But blood, especially tawdry and titillating, is a recurring motif. So are bite marks. No vampires, however, were harmed in the making of this howl at the moon. We keep hearing about Verity’s vile villains she concocts in her lurid fiction – but in reality, her real-life is more disturbing. Or is it?

Hoover and company, desperately emulating “Gone Girl” with a touch of wannabe Daphne du Maurier, focuses on dark and sinister through characters’ ridiculous whispering and superficial seductiveness. 

Despite having Oscar winner Volker Bertelmann compose the score, the histrionic strings are so on-the-nose with ‘dun-dun-dun’ beats every time something is about to be revealed that it evokes laughter.

Unfortunately, this high-gloss schlock isn’t even a good way to have fun with pretty people being plastic, or a ‘hate-watch,’ with like-minded pals who enjoy snickering over faux raciness.

Verity and Jeremy meet.

Appearing grounded and unfailingly polite, Hartnett does what he can as family man Jeremy Crawford in a thoroughly thankless role. Now that he’s had a career resurgence, with “Trap,” “Oppenheimer,” and “The Bear,” it’s nice to see him play a hunky and caring dad, no matter how much he’s secretly hiding. Because aren’t all male characters in Hoover’s novels not what they appear to be? Dun-dun-dun!

After the disingenuous “It Ends with Us” in 2024, in which Hoover did survivors of domestic abuse no favors by triggering, without any warning, and trivializing toxic relationships, I was furious.

So, loath to try another one of her film adaptations, I changed my mind just to see if I was missing something. Oh no. My first impressions are correct about terrible writing. 

Are studio’s this desperate for content? Apparently so, because she sells a ton of books and movie tickets. Her “Regretting You” and “Reminders of Him” were box office hits. Are these forgettable airport/beach reads?

Ghostwriter Lowen Ashleigh in Verity’s office.

Director Michael Showalter, who directed Anne Hathaway’s charming, breezy romantic comedy “The Idea of You,” Jessica Chastain to an Oscar in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” and the superb Oscar-nominated “The Big Sick,” is at the helm, so what happened? 

Did he convince himself he could pull a Paul Feig and hit gold with “A Simple Favor” like success? Perhaps the twisted thriller genre isn’t a good fit, unlike his wildly popular comedies and ‘women’ pictures. Not only are the actions of all involved mostly ludicrous, but the shock values are insincere, especially the ending.

Nevertheless, Hathaway acquits herself by taking the campy route. Looking all glamorous in slinky red outfits and wearing fiery red lipstick, she ramps up the sex appeal as America’s most alluring novelist of popular pulp fiction. Oh look how fun she is on talk shows – and eating chicken wings on “The Hot Ones”!

She lowers her voice a husky register when she’s doing voice-overs of her unnerving autobiography that she left on a USB flash drive hidden in a cigarette box in her desk. Oh, Kathleen Turner in “Body Heat” has nothing on Hathaway here – or Barbara Stanwyck in “Double Indemnity.”

Incapacitated Verity (Anne Hathaway) outdoors in Vermont.

Fully committed as this mystery woman, Hathaway chews the scenery with menace in ‘before’ scenes while looking wan and lifeless, incapacitated by a car accident in ‘after’ scenes, to give a viable contrast. Remember her 15-minute Oscar-winning role as impoverished Fantine in “Les Miserables”?

She may be over-exposed this year in “The Odyssey,” “The End of Oak Street,” and “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” but she’s doing her best Miranda Priestly here in the sole portrayal that works (even if it’s not a shred realistic).

Now, she is bankable. So that’s the one saving grace in the “Verity” sad misfire that has too many unresolved issues and too little to recommend.

“Verity” is a 2026 psychological thriller directed by Michael Showalter and starring Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, and Josh Hartnett. It is Rated R for sexual content, some nudity, language, violence and bloody images, and the run time is 1 hour, 58-minutes. It opens in theatres Oct. 2. Lynn’s Grade: D.

Kathryn Bigelow’s Chilling ‘A House of Dynamite’ Is a Frightening Warning

Kathryn Bigelow’s Chilling ‘A House of Dynamite’ Is a Frightening Warning

By Alex McPherson

A bleak and palm-sweating look at just how profoundly screwed we all are, director Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite” refuses to answer its impossible questions about nuclear war, and urges reflection on the chaos and fatalism of our current fractured reality.

The film, a work of fiction that remains chillingly plausible, zeroes in on the question: What if a nuclear warhead launches from an unknown location in the Pacific for an unknown reason, and is en-route to Chicago with only 18 minutes until impact?

It’s an eventuality that many personnel in the windowless facilities of the government have been trained to deal with, but can they put theory into practice when the beginning of the end is at hand? Is anyone prepared to endure the fallout? 

Bigelow’s film repeats those 18 minutes three times from different perspectives within a series of situation rooms and command-and-control suites from Alaska to Washington, D.C., going up the chain of command until we reach the President (Idris Elba).

Military and civilian personnel — portrayed by an impressive ensemble including Anthony Ramos, Rebecca Ferguson, Moses Ingram, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, and Gabriel Basso, among others —  scramble to make sense of and neutralize the threat before it’s too late. The President struggles to decide what to do next should that missile actually hit Chicago. 

Time is of the essence, and these trained staff are susceptible to buckling under the weight of what’s headed their way. They are ultimately powerless no matter their rank, and an uncertain future is in the trembling hands of the Commander in Chief. As one flummoxed NSA advisor puts it, the options are either surrender or suicide.

The stakes are dreadfully high, and, despite some unnecessary flourishes, Bigelow refuses to reassure us. Indeed, “A House of Dynamite” is a warning about our (and the world’s in general) precarious situation involving nuclear weapons, as well as a high-strung look at the ways procedures and moral clarity can crumple when theory is put into practice.

Not exactly a “jovial” viewing experience, and one ripe for debate. Still, it’s compulsively entertaining— bringing the scenario to life with a vigorous attention to detail and layered structure that builds toward an integral choice. Bigelow is firmly in her wheelhouse here, supported by acting and production value wholly up to the task.

Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim aren’t aiming to make a “satire” here à la Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.” Rather, the officials depicted in “A House of Dynamite” are skilled at their jobs, many with families at home dealing with familiar, relatable challenges. 

The meaningful, albeit brief, insight into their personal lives before the ICBM is detected furthers the idea of these officials being people at the end of day — that no matter their rank, they are capable of fault just like the rest of us.

Their success in this situation, as depicted in this film, is also ultimately as much dependent on luck as their competence; the advanced technology they have at their disposal can only help them so much, too, as unknowns about the missile’s origins and what they should do if it strikes Chicago are left frustratingly opaque.

Bigelow, having consulted with several ex-Pentagon officials, brings a fly-on-the-wall verisimilitude to her direction, with cinematography by the legendary Barry Ackroyd (a frequent Paul Greengrass collaborator) that adds an effectively shaky, almost documentary-esque realism to the proceedings from start to finish.

“A House of Dynamite” is primarily composed of conversations, but fraught ones, backed by a rattling, slightly overused score by Volker Bertelmann (similar to his work in “Conclave”) that lends extra tautness. 

The film’s triptych structure adds additional context to what we’ve heard and seen before. Bigelow and Oppenheim visualize the series of checks of balances at play, and the reality that those systems cannot save us.

It’s all effectively nerve-jangling, stressful, and draining through the film’s insistence on going through those 18 minutes three different times — ending on a note that encourages conversation, or, perhaps more likely, shocked silence. Less impressive are the occasional “Hollywood” lines of dialogue that break the illusion of real-life that Bigelow works hard to maintain.

But with such an outstanding cast — Ferguson, Letts, and Elba are particular standouts — it’s difficult to become too distracted by the script’s intermittent clunkiness.

“A House of Dynamite” has additional resonance when thinking about what our current governmental administration would do in the same position. Even with experts at the helm in this film, though, doom is possible if we continue down the same path, alongside procedures that are far from foolproof. Bigelow presents a dire message, and it’s extremely hard to take your eyes off the screen.

“A House of Dynamite” is a 2025 political thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow and starring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos, Jason Clarke, Tracy Letts, and Gabriel Basso. The film is rated R for language and run time is 1 hour, 52 minutes. It opened in theatres Oct. 10 and streams on Netflix Oct. 24. Alex’s Grade: B+.