"Verity" is the fourth Colleen Hoover adaptation to reach cinemas, and it remains as critically unsuccessful as its predecessors in translating the novelist's bestselling work to screen. Directed by Michael Showalter, the film tells an unintentionally humorous tale of a struggling novelist hired to ghostwrite for a famous but incapacitated author, only to become entangled in dark mysteries. Despite the project's commercial potential—previous Hoover adaptations have collectively earned over half a billion dollars—the film struggles to justify the source material's popularity with audiences unfamiliar with Hoover's books.

The film suffers from flat pacing, overwrought plotting and a director ill-suited to the erotic thriller genre, leaving its impressive cast looking embarrassed or indifferent. Dakota Johnson, playing ghostwriter Lowen Ashleigh, embodies her trademark passive screen presence in a role that demands little nuance, whilst Anne Hathaway appears frozen in a part requiring only "glassy hauteur." Michael Showalter, who successfully directed Hathaway in the romantic comedy "The Idea of You," fumbles the material's high-camp melodrama and po-faced eroticism so badly that any humour emerges unintentionally, resulting in a film that feels simultaneously overwrought and narratively undernourished.