Verity(2026)

Unfortunately this was bad. Highly questionable choices that were made in nearly every aspect of storytelling, together with the most cringeworthy ending sequences I’ve seen all year. Waiting until streaming is advised unless you have AMC A-list and are otherwise bored and have nothing better to do.

The core issue is with our protagonist character. Lowen is meant to be who we can empathize with, but even with a flat and nondescript personality, she is not relatable at all, not to mention the crazy shit that the story ends up having her do. As a viewer I constantly wanted to yell at her instead of feeling what she’s supposed to be feeling. I was thinking this film would have had a lot more potential if they did an “All About Eve” thing and made her a freak from the get-go, but as we’d later find out from that 10 min voiceover at the end, that’s not the story they wanted to tell. The funny thing is that I think they had hoped it would elevate the story, but it only revealed how utterly they had fumbled and that the themes they wanted us walk away with were just not there in the story in any way.

There were other mistakes made: criminal underuse of Anne Hathaway herself. Josh Hartnett is not nearly hot enough for Anne or Dakota. And what was even the point of that nurse character, or the son, or that car accident she’s in at the beginning that wasted like 15 mins of runtime?

I honestly have a hard time naming a single thing they did well. Perhaps the fact that it feels like this is a film they had fun making. They kind of just followed every whim and went completely off course like 30 mins in and only when they were editing did they realize "oh shucks this is a mess" and had to try to reel it back. At that point though, just commit.