I wanted to like “Verity.”
No, the book was not high literature, but it was exactly the sort of page-turning romp that dragged me right out of a funk in the single day I read it. I did not want, nor really expect, the film adaptation to fix any of the book’s problems; I wanted fun. After all, must a movie be good? Can it not just give us a good time?
Alas, “Verity” fails at even this basic demand, let alone creating anything filmically worthwhile. What was thrilling on the page becomes tedious and dull in the hands of the filmmakers, a bizarre problem to have, given the scandalous twists and salacious trysts. The most interesting part of the film is not anything within it, but rather the circumstances of how it ended up bad.
I propose that “Verity” was fine on a script level, directed competently and acted with enough care. The problem lies with the post-production. Not a level most people think about with movies, but if there was ever a movie to make you realize how much an edit can be messed up, it’s this one.
Example one: you can tell a lot about a piece of media by how it opens. The very first sentence of the novel involves our protagonist, Lowen Ashleigh, getting drenched in blood as she bears witness to a grisly car accident. Cheap? Sure. But effective, both as a hook and as a baseline for the standards of taste to follow. The scene does exist in the film, but only later.
“Verity” the movie starts with the title character in an interview, where we learn that she’s a bestselling crime author who has an ominous knack for writing from the villain’s perspective. The fact that we’re being told this literally in an interview context makes it overly expository and lacking in any sort of finesse.
I suppose there is a necessity to introduce Verity near the start of our story, and it’s not like they can fix the dullness of the setup in post. But instead of trying to jazz up what footage they do have, the edit just goes through the motions, complete with a tacky title card and tackier music (another incessant problem). The biggest thing it introduces is the lack of quality in the rest of the movie.
After that, we move forward a year to meet struggling writer Lowen, whose books accomplish nothing except clogging up space on shelves. One day, after the aforementioned car disaster, Lowen has a meeting with Verity’s agent and Verity’s dashing husband, Jeremy. It turns out Verity herself experienced car troubles and was left totally catatonic.
Now, she needs a ghostwriter. Lowen agrees, of course, and soon travels to New England to trawl through Verity’s notes–and a mysterious autobiography. Verity might have far more dark secrets than anyone could have imagined, and might not be as comatose as the doctors said. It’s up to Lowen to keep her wits about her, as nothing in Verity’s household is as it seems.
So, why do I point to the editing as the source of “Verity’s” problems? Process of elimination. The script is mostly a straightforward adaptation: at most, you have some standard book-to-film medium-based changes, and the ending is a tad more ambiguous. Showalter’s direction makes enough interesting choices that I can’t conclude he was totally asleep at the wheel (I quite admired the decision to have Verity appear in certain moments to narrate her own diary, conveying her constantly felt presence). The actors, all insanely well-cast, try hard enough; Anne Hathaway in particular affects enough femme fatale brio that the movie almost awakens whenever she’s on screen. So who are we left with?
We have a saying in film that a movie is made three times: the script, the shoot and the edit room. Of these, by far the least prestigious is the editor, who at one point was thought to merely be putting the pieces together. But editing is far more complicated and artful. Even ignoring broader structural changes, what shots to use, when and how long they last, add up and become a crucial part of telling your movie’s story. Case in point: “Verity.”
The entire pace of the movie is far too slow and unengaging for an erotic thriller. Colleen Hoover’s electric prose and distinctive character voice for Lowen are simply not replicated on screen. Instead, scenes kind of shuffle in, mumble their important information, and shuffle out. Conversations that should feel awkward just feel protracted and naturalistic dialogue comes off stilted. Most attempts at cultivating tension fall totally flat, thanks to a lack of necessary impact.
Take the makeout sequence featured in the trailer (to avoid spoilers, I won’t give context): the basic gist is that Lowen appears to make out with Jeremy, only for Verity to suddenly appear in his place and bite her. The teaser captures the kind of vibe this scene should have, with an air of danger that climaxes in an “oh snap” when Verity shows herself.
As it plays in the movie, the sound design does absolutely nothing; the score is in the same Hallmark mystery key it always is and the edit pulls its punch by treating it as any other shot-reverse-shot. She could be having coffee with Verity and nothing about the editing style would change. It’s a sequence that’s great in concept but is botched beyond belief in execution.
To be clear, I don’t think this was an amazing movie killed stone-cold dead by post-production. The tone is far too serious for the ridiculous material, and the screenwriter sanding off the harsher moments of Hoover’s book to class it up totally misses the appeal.
Nor am I saying that the sole responsibility lies with editor Jay Cassidy: the man has three Oscar nominations and successfully pulled off the much harder task of editing a documentary to wild success with “An Inconvenient Truth.” He knows what he’s doing. Probably everyone working on the post-production team does. Doubtless, “Verity” is another victim of the studio system prioritizing quantity over quality. It’s like they shot the movie and tried to rush it out as quickly as possible, because it’s already in the can and it’s Colleen Hoover, so people are going to see it regardless.
“Verity” was likely never going to make for an amazing movie unless it could fully embrace its camp elements (a pipe dream given Hoover’s direct involvement). Yet I can’t help but feel we could have gotten a much better one with a better post-production effort.
The teaser linked earlier does a much better job at capturing the right tone and energy this type of adaptation demanded. That’s probably the best you’re going to get for a “Verity” adaptation. As it stands, with all of the lurid twists and turns, the biggest thing you’re left wondering is why you should care.
