'Verity' Is the Exact Type of Garbage We Need Right Now

Welp. The reviews for Verity are in, and the reviews for Verity are bad, with The New Yorker calling the Colleen Hoover adaptation, “a criminal waste of talent,” Variety claiming it’s, “never remotely sexy,” and the New York Times deeming its plot, “so bonkers it simply runs out of road.” And yet, these pans have done nothing to stifle audience enthusiasm: the film grossed $32.6 million in its opening weekend and currently boasts a 70% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (compared to the 33% critics’ Tomatometer).

Why the discrepancy? Because it is pure and pulpy women-centric fun.

A brief primer on the ludicrous plot: Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) is a mid-tier thriller writer who—after getting the guts of a New York City cyclist sprayed all over her cashmere sweater—strips down to her lacy bra to accept a helping hand (and remarkably well-fitting dress shirt) from handsome stranger Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett) before continuing on to a mystery job interview. But wouldn’t you know it? Jeremy is, in fact, the mystery interviewer! His offer? Fulfill his wife Verity’s book contract by ghost writing the rest of her bestselling series and staying mum about the “accident” that left her paralyzed and catatonic, though apparently still able to pull off a chunky knit. Lowen moves—as one does—into the couple’s stark and Nordic Vermont home, where she proceeds to cup warm mugs of tea, masturbate in a rock-formation bathtub and discover a hidden manuscript that implies that Verity (Anne Hathaway) may not be the person she seems.

There is much that is absurd here—ranging from the fact that Verity and Jeremy’s nine-year-old son seems to be played by a five-year-old, to the fact that, in my six years of working in book publishing, I never once saw an author get offered a complimentary cocktail, let alone a free New England writing retreat. And, per the critical take-downs, the purported steaminess is more pee-your-pants than remove-your-pants. Why is everybody wiping frosting off each other’s mouths as foreplay? What are the mechanics of teething one’s wooden headboard in ecstasy?

But to take this movie too seriously or to hold it to the standards of psychosexual classics like Fatal Attraction is to the miss the point. Colleen Hoover creates delightful, women-led schlock without apology, and plays with the best female genres: melodrama, romance, domestic mystery. Moreover, watching this movie is the cinematic equivalent of sinking into an airplane seat with a bag of M&Ms and an issue of Glamour. You get talented, pretty people in beautiful locations and clothing doing things that, over the course of an hour and 57 minutes, will never once make you bored.

I saw Verity in a half-full movie theater with my three best friends, and we had the goddamn time of our lives, clutching each other at every campy jump scare and guffawing at every piece of absurd dialogue. (Shoutout to the line, “I was his drug and he was mine,” and the manuscript that ends, “And then I’ll crash my car into a tree.”)

After all, my friends and I grew up on tongue-in-cheek thrillers like To Die For and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, and we don’t require all our movie-theater experiences to be Oscar-worthy. In fact, it’s a relief when one doesn’t have high-minded aspirations.

I clearly don’t know director Michael Showalter’s state of mind, but I suspect he and his cast were in on the joke and aware of the film they were making—a movie that would bring women together to laugh, dissect and meme. (Yes, our group chat has changed its name to “the Machiavellian cunts,” an insult Dakota Johnson hurls climactically.)

If that’s bad cinema? Well, then sign me up.