‘Verity’ builds its tension around a question that becomes increasingly difficult to answer: who can actually be trusted?
Best-selling author Colleen Hoover’s novel of the same name has always placed uncertainty at the center of its story, and the film adaptation carries that same instability into an on-screen Crawford estate.
The story follows Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a struggling writer who is tasked with ghostwriting and finishing the book series of best-selling author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway). Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) approached Lowen with the opportunity to finish his injured wife’s work, claiming she’d been a fan of Lowen’s “brilliant, undiscovered voice”.
Lowen relocates to the Crawford’s estate, finding what appears to be Verity’s chilling autobiographical manuscript, and wrestles with the truth of disturbing confessions, contradictory stories, and the reality in which the ‘incapacitated’ Verity lives.
When asked whether preparing for the film frightened any friends or family members of theirs, Hathaway explained that she ‘terrified’ her cousin-in-law with her portrayal. The two attended a screening of The Devil Wears Prada 2 during its third week in theaters when the Verity trailer appeared.
Directed by Michael Showalter with a screenplay by Nick Antosca, Johnson executive produced while Hathaway, Hoover, Kerry Orent and Lauren Levine also produced.
The film retains one of the book’s most revealing deceptions. Jeremy eventually confesses to Lowen that it was he who found her, not his wife. Verity had never read Lowen’s work, despite Jeremy telling her otherwise in order to convince her to take the job.
“I have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to lying, so if someone got me somewhere under false pretenses and then told me about it later…no,” Hathaway shared.
Hartnett agreed, lightheartedly joking that he fought to have the line taken out. “I’m the same way, so I say to Michael, ‘Why would he do this?!’ I’m glad he kept it in.”
It’s one of the film’s clearest examples of how deception operates inside the Crawford household, and how willing Lowen is to settle into the toxicity.
“She’s deeply lost, grieving, has a real darkness to her and is drawn to darkness, and wants the life she sees [Verity and Jeremy] living,” Johnson said of her character. “This option, as toxic as it is, seems better to her.”
Even when a character appears to reveal the truth, another question immediately takes its place.
Showalter approaches that uncertainty with the film’s setting. When speaking about the visual appeal of the Crawford’s house in the movie, Showalter describes it as a kind of ‘Pandora’s box’: “I’ve always had this idea that the house is kind of a maze…like a rabbit hole you go down and you don’t know quite where you are or exactly how many rooms there are.”
The house becomes part of the mystery. Its rooms, corridors, and hidden spaces reflect the same uncertainty that surrounds the people living inside it. Showalter carries that idea into Verity’s office as well, saying “It’s meant to be a boudoir, very feminine… almost like a ‘creative womb’ she lives in.”
For Hoover, the film’s interpretation of the house succeeded in ways that even the novel could not fully capture. She said the visual of the house that came to life in the film was “so much better than what was written”.
She continued, “I just hope [readers] are full of the same feelings the book gave them… and that they go escape, have a fun time, and see it in a theater because it’s such a beautifully-shot film.”
Verity is in theaters starting October 2.
