Colleen Hoover had written 16 of her wildly successful romance novels before switching gears in 2018 and taking a shot at writing a psychological thriller, Verity. She even self-published it, and it led to yet another literary triumph, one that seems perhaps a bit more personal than most of her output since the two main female characters are both book authors of the same type of material Hoover usually traffics in. So this begs the question: Could one or both of them actually be alter egos for Hoover herself? Well, at least it makes for a good guessing game.
With Verity, Hoover, also a producer on the film version, is looking at the fourth adaptation of one of her novels in just two years. The first in 2024, It Ends With Us was a huge box office hit, but now is really only remembered for the ongoing brutal legal battle between its stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. The second in 2025 was the completely forgettable Regretting You, which I regret having to sit through. Earlier this year came the third, and best, Reminders of Him with a nice gritty performance from Maika Monroe. And now we have Verity, the second Hoover adaptation of 2026, a strong female-oriented story that ironically was directed by a man, Michael Showalter, and scripted by another man, Nick Antosca. With smart casting of Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson this female-centric premise sounded promising, but coming on the heels of last year’s sleeper hit The Housemaid, also fronted by two big female stars in Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, this one feels like leftovers. That one took it all to the max, this one is a little more meh.
It is no fault of the stars. They do what they are asked. Aside from flashbacks to her earlier life, Hathaway is stuck with a role that otherwise requires her to appear as if she is in a vegetative state — no talk, no walk, no body movements. Kinda creepy. She plays the title role, uber-successful romance author Verity Crawford, whose career and family life come crashing to a halt after a horrific auto accident has changed everything. And her counterpoint here, Lowen Ashleigh, played nicely by Johnson, is a struggling author, not nearly as famous or established as Verity but who is summoned by Verity’s publishers for a high-paying job ghosting novels for Verity to keep the brand going as it were. Verity’s loving husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) is fully on board for this idea, and in fact accidentally bumped into Lowen on the street and site of a bloody accident that shakes her up as a dead man’s blood was splattered all over her. Jeremy offers his white shirt for her as a quick fix for the appointment she has, and as it turns out he is in the publisher’s office when she arrives. What a coincidence!
One thing leads to another and she agrees to take the job, even spending time soaking up Verity’s life at their lavish Vermont home right by the lake. As she stumbles onto a hard drive on Verity’s computer containing an unpublished autobiographical manuscript, “So Be It,” she finds herself immersed in Verity’s own words and descriptions of her life, even as the real deal sits nearly comatose in a nearby room. As Lowen uncovers her secrets, the narrative features linear flashbacks to Verity’s romance, marriage and motherhood with twins, a girl Harper and a boy Crew (Brady Wagner). We also learn Verity had serious problems sharing attention with the kids, a resentment she had even given birth, according to her own words. The death of 8-year-old Harper in a drowning also figures into all this as Lowen goes deeper into what made Verity tick, including the attractive husband with whom she now finds herself in sexual situations. Her discoveries become increasingly more dark and she also discovers the writing process and philosophy that made Verity so successful, but it could be a clue to secrets she still holds.
All this takes up about the first hour and 15 minutes, a brooding pace that spends a lot of time focused on Lowen reading stuff about Verity, Jeremy slowly becoming attracted to her, and those flashbacks that don’t paint a bright picture of his wife, with the exception of some flashy TV appearances with the likes of Gayle King, Hot Ones host Sean Evans, and Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper all in cameos playing themselves. Fear not though because even if it never reaches the heights and grand guignol of stuff like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or Single White Female, or the aforementioned The Housemaid (the latter with a similar setup as a young woman becomes immersed in the wealthy household of another and then getting sexually involved with the husband), Verity is fairly refined until the last 40 minutes. That’s when it hits the usual beats for this kind of psychological thriller and stuff gets revealed, and people may not be who we think they are. But you knew that.
There are a couple of good jump-scares that the largely female audience I previewed it with reacted strongly to, and the various inevitable twists, though predictable, finally woke me up enough to give this thing a pass largely because Hathaway and Johnson are both magnetic performers and make it watchable — particularly Johnson who carries the largest load here. For the longest time you wonder what could have attracted Hathaway to the title role, but there is finally a payoff for her character. Hartnett is believable in the hubby role, although — without spoilers — this character is becoming a bit of a cliché in this genre.
The production design from Amy Williams is lushly impressive, as is the Bernard Herrmann-influenced score by Volker Bertlemann. Even if a female touch behind the camera might have deepened this scenario, Showalter knows his way around this kind of material enough to get by, though his last Amazon film also with Hathaway, The Idea of You, better suited him and the engaging star.
Producers are Antosca, Alex Hedlund, Stacey Sher, Showalter, Jordana Mollick, Hathaway and Hoover.
Title: Verity
Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios
Release date: October 2, 2026
Director: Michael Showalter
Screenwriter: Nick Antosca
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Brady Wagner
Rating: R
Running time: 1 hr 54 mins
