So where is Michael Douglas when you need him? (Probably writing more “memoirs”: One Helluva Ride 2.) It certainly seems they don’t make thrillers like they used to, or we remember the likes of Basic Instinct (1992) and Fatal Attraction (1987) more fondly than they deserve—both with Michael Douglas. Case in point: Recent release Verity, starring Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway, a thriller flirting with the category of So-Bad-It’s-Good. If you like Dakota Johnson saying lines so slowly you think they need to decrease her Xanax prescription, you’ll love it. Or if you like seeing Anne Hathaway reduced to a somewhat-maybe paralyzed accident victim, have at it.
Verity, based on a best-selling Colleen Hoover novel (that one hopes is not as bad as the movie), is an eponymous title from the anti-heroine’s loaded moniker of “Verity Crawford,” which signals this story is about “truth”—well, not really. Methinks it’s more about writers making money by writing trashy, tawdry thrillers and trying to pass them off as somehow indicative of “truth.” Anne Hathaway, fresh off her star turn in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, plays Verity, a thriller novelist who has suffered a mysterious “accident” (in thrillers it’s a rule we put quotes around the suspicious events artfully crafted to fill any glaring plot holes).
Spoiler Alert: There’s nothing to spoil here, but if you don’t want to know too much about the movie, go do something else. And why hasn’t there been a trashy film titled Spoiler Alert, huh? It’s begging to be shot, with Sydney Sweeney as the “Spoiler”—probably her Nanny nickname in role as au pair to rich, handsome-but-evil twins who convince her to recreate Sharon Stone’s interrogation-room oopsy every night to help them fall asleep.
And while we’re at it, Verity follows close on the heels of another stinker-thriller, The Housemaid, starring another pair of usually reliable actresses, Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney. There’s already a Housemaid II, if I’m not mistaken. So bad it demands a sequel! Actually it’s titled The Housemaid’s Secret, due in 2027. An “erotic thriller” no less. Let me guess: The “housemaid” finds a journal in which one of her bosses confesses to blood-curdling secrets . . . which she then hides among the cleaning-supplies.
Accidents play a major role in Verity, although what actually happens in said “accident” remains murky. Early on we learn that Verity’s child Harper died in a canoeing accident, in the gorgeous lake that their gorgeous house in gorgeous Vermont borders. (As a veteran kayaker, I notice they seem to think drowning would be Activity #1 if your canoe were to flip. Maybe Verity is a veritable stone when it comes to a little swim.) So Harper died in the lake . . . maybe? Because then Verity wrote a “practice novel” (oh yeah lots of writers do that) titled So Be It (catchy? Uh uh) in which she detailed how much she hates her husband now and how the twins ruined her life and she had to drown little Harper because making peanut butter sandwiches gets to be a drag after a while.
But it’s just practice! Right? So her movie husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), accidentally logs on to her laptop and reads the “fictional murder-of-my-daughter” manuscript. He sees red. How could she do such a thing? Am I married to a monster? But Jeremy is no Hamlet: Soon as he calms down he plots to murder Verity via an auto “accident.” Which he does, the accident at least, but Verity doesn’t die (boohoo) and is merely kinda paralyzed, although that is not entirely clear. (Sometimes she seems to get around just fine, if you call walking with a limp “just fine.”)
Enter Dakota Johnson as “Lowen Ashleigh,” who is also a writer. Of erotic thrillers no less. (She gives Basic Instinct‘s “Catherine Trammell” a tacky run for her money.) And since Verity is paralyzed she can’t finish her latest novel, so her publisher hires Lowen to ghost-write three novels. (Oh sure publishers do that all the time.) She gets to hang out in Verity’s house and make-out with Jeremy. When Jeremy confesses the whole story about finding the ms. and getting his revenge on poor little Harper by crippling Verity “Lowen” quickly jumps to his help and instructs him how best to murder Verity and make it look like, you guessed it, an accident. (This involves suffocating Verity and dumping her body in the lake. Wouldn’t the coroner notice the suffocation evidence and how it did not appear to be a drowning? Did these people not watch Columbo?)
As performance-artist Maude Lebowski quips in The Big Lebowski, upon showing the Dude the first scene of a porno starring Peter Stormare as Nihilist #1, who arrives at the apartment of two lingerie-clad young lovelies in his role as a Cable-TV repairman/studmuffin, “You can guess the rest.” To which the Dude replies, “He fixes the cable?”
Verity ends with Lowen as a much-lauded, superhot commercial-trash novelist giving TV interviews and pregnant with Jeremy’s baby and they’re both getting away with murder. Or maybe the baby is all grown up and now enrolled at Princeton. (Then, on a visit home for Thanksgiving, both parents die in a suspicious “accident” involving an heirloom grandfather clock, a canoe, and moose antlers. The last scene includes said offspring smiling mysteriously while cashing the inheritance check.)
So Verity the trashy novelist gets punished by being murdered for writing an entire “practice ms.” (What’s a gal to do? Give up “practice” writing?) By the love of her life no less! Now that’s sweet. Me? I rather like Anne Hathaway and think she didn’t deserve being suffocated and dumped in the lake. And how did little Harper die, anyway? Just your average/ordinary canoeing accident? And why in the world would Dakota Johnson suddenly start barking murder commands? Now it is true that people in thrillers murder at the drop of a hat. And then later do voice-overs to explain it all. But still.
Only in thrillers, baby. Only in thrillers. They ain’t what they used to be. I get all nostalgic now, thinking of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, boiling Michael Douglas’s bunny and asserting, “I’m not going to be ignored, Dan.”