Colleen Hoover’s psychological thriller *Verity* has been adapted into a film starring Dakota Johnson as struggling author Lowen Ashleigh and Anne Hathaway as the title character, a celebrated novelist left almost entirely unresponsive after a car accident. Hired to ghostwrite for Verity, Lowen moves into her family’s Vermont home and finds an unpublished autobiographical manuscript that raises troubling questions about Verity’s past. The review sees potential in the female-centred premise and its leads, but says the film feels underwhelming compared with the thriller *The Housemaid*.

The story also explores whether Verity or Lowen might reflect aspects of Hoover, whose novel was a departure from her earlier romance books and is being adapted with her as a producer. Lowen’s discoveries touch on Verity’s marriage, motherhood, the drowning death of her eight-year-old daughter Harper, and her relationship with her husband Jeremy, played by Josh Hartnett. The reviewer praises the casting but says Hathaway spends much of the film appearing comatose, while the first hour and 15 minutes moves at a brooding pace centred on Lowen reading the manuscript.