Anne Hathaway’s Verity is completely ridiculous – and exactly the film we need right now

Some films expand our understanding of the human condition. Some offer profound catharsis, interrogate society’s deepest wounds, or leave us reconsidering our place in the universe.

Others put Josh Hartnett in a chunky knit sweater inside a beautiful, vaguely Scandinavian mansion in the woods, add sex on gorgeous granite countertops, suspicious deaths, and a crackling fire, and maybe that’s enough.

Both fit in the world of cinema.

Verity, the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, has no delusions about which kind of film it is.

Dakota Johnson stars as Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to finish a bestselling book series by Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), a famous author left incapacitated after a horrific accident.

The job brings Lowen to the Crawfords’ enormous, isolated home, where she begins digging through Verity’s office and discovers an unpublished manuscript containing some extremely disturbing revelations.

There is also Verity’s grieving husband Jeremy (Hartnett), who is handsome, vulnerable, and conveniently down the hall.

Verity is heavy-handed, horny, and occasionally so detached from realism there was a line or two that earned exasperated chuckles from the audience at the screening I saw. But judging it for that feels a little like criticising a rollercoaster for having too many drops. The excess is rather the point.

Every room is drenched in unease, every lingering glance feels vaguely incriminating, and the film keeps tightening the screw until it reaches a bonkers, hard-to-believe final act. It is deeply atmospheric, genuinely tense, and mostly entertaining. Is it also a bit ridiculous? Absolutely.

But another important factor deserves consideration, and one the critical establishment has shamefully overlooked: some of us take autumn extremely seriously. Some of us are fall girls.

Importantly, a fall girl can be any gender. It is not so much an identity as a vocation.

The moment temperatures drop below 18C, we begin eating soup and butternut squash concoctions with the frequency of babies recently introduced to solid food. We have strong opinions about knitwear. We pay £6 for coffees flavoured with spices we largely ignore for the remaining nine months of the year. We light candles called things like Autumn Library and Spiced Orchard and wear matching PJ sets as we get cozy with a book in the evenings.

Most importantly, we understand that certain pieces of media are seasonally dependent.

A film that is objectively ridiculous in June can become Citizen Kane when you watch it under a blanket or in a cozy cinema after a seasonal craft lager at the pub in October. And Verity is a gorgeous entry in this important genre.

There are grey skies. Ominous woods. Crackling fires. Gorgeous wool coats. Moral complexity. Mysterious deaths. A sinister manuscript. A cavernous house where seemingly every room comes equipped with a fireplace, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, an artfully draped throw blanket, a steaming mug of tea and the reassuring ambience of generational wealth.

Josh Hartnett spends much of the film looking troubled in knitwear. Dakota Johnson wears a designer trench coat in the drizzle and, when things get really bleak, looks pensive in a hot bath.

It is both a psychological thriller and a fall girl’s Pinterest board with a body count. Five stars for autumn. Now we can discuss the film.

Johnson’s particular brand of charming deadpan works beautifully here, giving Lowen a wryness that stops the story from disappearing entirely up its own gothic backside.

Hathaway, meanwhile, is having the time of her life.

She plays Verity for much of the film like a storybook villain who has somehow wandered into an erotic thriller, communicating in lingering stares, heightened menace and a strange, slippery transatlantic accent delivered through immaculately painted red lips. It is a performance so enormous it could have its own billing – but, crucially, every inch of that excess feels intentional.

When the story eventually requires Hathaway to abruptly strip all of that away, she does so beautifully. The contrast reveals how calculated the excess has been and provides one of the film’s most effective turns.

The biggest surprise, though, is Hartnett.

Jeremy could easily have been handsome plot furniture: grieving husband, forbidden object of desire, long eyelashes against unfairly prominent cheekbones.

Instead, Hartnett gives what may be the most nuanced performance in the film.

There is something unusually lived-in about him, particularly in the quieter moments when Jeremy is trying to keep grief, desire, anger and suspicion from spilling out at once. Hartnett consistently chooses restraint in a film that has never met a dial it didn’t want to turn up, and that makes him strangely magnetic.

Opposite Hathaway’s theatricality and Johnson’s cool detachment, he gives the story some much-needed emotional weight. It is the sort of performance that makes you wonder what Hartnett might do with more complicated leading roles in this stage of his career – and whether Hollywood spent rather too long being distracted by his handsome face.

That restraint also helps keep Verity from finally plunging headfirst into melodrama, although God knows it peers over the edge.

And yet, there is undeniable pleasure in all of it.

Hoover’s enormous fanbase presumably understands this already. You do not come to Verity seeking restraint any more than you go to a strip club hoping for a tasteful suggestion of cleavage.

Is Verity a masterpiece? No.

But masterpieces can be exhausting. Sometimes it is autumn and you want to spend the afternoon crunching through leaves with a chai latte, warm up with friends in a warm pub, then disappear into a dark cinema for something gripping, sexy and – despite all the murder and psychological torment – strangely cozy.

The nights are drawing in. The weather is miserable. You have worn your best coat. Now you simply want to watch three extraordinarily attractive people make catastrophically poor decisions in a house with really amazing bathtubs.

Verity may not be high art, but neither is a pumpkin spice latte, and I’ll be shamelessly enjoying both this autumn.