Verity (2026)
Directed by Michael Showalter
Lowen Ashleigh, hired to ghostwrite for best-selling author Verity Crawford, uncovers Verity's autobiographical notes, and becomes involved in what may prove to be a lethal conspiracy.
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38 films that influenced Verity
What critics say influenced Verity
Like an AI mystery generated from bits of Jane Eyre and The Housemaid…
It may not be a fair comparison because the two films have different objectives, but “The Housemaid” (2025) is way more fun than “Verity.”
At the end of 2025, BookTok diehards were gifted one deadly fun book-to-screen adaptation in the form of The Housemaid, a semi-erotic psychological thriller starring two of Hollywood's most famous blondes as two women who find themselves caught up in a love triangle, with some seriously disturbing secrets lying beneath the surface.
In many ways, Michael Showalter's take on Verity plays out like The Housemaid's darker sister…
The success of Paul Feig’s naughty-but-not-nice movie The Housemaid proves it.
Verity could be looked at as a lesser sibling to The Housemaid and A Simple Favor with its mix of hideous lifestyle porn, forbidden lust, and outlandish twists.
Comedy directors (see also Paul Feig of “The Housemaid”) tend to do well in this genre…
Verity could be looked at as a lesser sibling to The Housemaid and A Simple Favor with its mix of hideous lifestyle porn, forbidden lust, and outlandish twists.
…taking a similar path to Paul Feig, who made such mysterious thrillers as A Simple Favor and The Housemaid after years in pure comedy. In fact, the two aforementioned Feig titles share numerous similarities with Verity.
Director
Alfred Hitchcock
Critics invoke Hitchcock by name, and compare Verity to 2 of Hitchcock’s films.
Visuals
On Hitchcock, rather than any one film
Hitchcockian set pieces…
In Lowen’s overactive imagination, Hathaway plays a Hitchcockian femme fatale always wearing her signature color, red.
It’s also part of the decidedly Hitchcockian aura that director Michael Showalter has cast over proceedings.
With Dakota Johnson’s character of Lowen, director Showalter had a character as promising as Jeff from Rear Window or Amy from Gone Girl.
…it’s hard not to feel bad for Verity as Jeremy gently “Vertigo”s Lowen into a better version of his wife…
With a dash of “Gone Girl,” there may be another thing or two elements in this Colleen Hoover’s adopted novel that might bear similarity to the other films, but that’s about it.
With Dakota Johnson’s character of Lowen, director Showalter had a character as promising as Jeff from Rear Window or Amy from Gone Girl.
It’s the palest of Gone Girl imitations…
Director
Brian De Palma
Critics invoke Palma by name, and compare Verity to 2 of Palma’s films.
Visuals
On Palma, rather than any one film
The split-diopter shots in one flashback, for instance, are a nice nod to the master of salacious thrillers, Brian De Palma.
…a transgressive DePalma-esque erotic thriller…
There are cheeky hints of Daphne du Maurier and Brian De Palma that promise a good time.
Showalter’s anonymous visuals mostly ape the tone of kinky, disreputable thrillers like Body Double…
References to Dressed to Kill and Basic Instinct include borrowed wallpaper and an ice pick.
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Parts of Verity will have you wondering whether its intention is to resurrect the '80s and '90s erotic thrillers – your Basic Instincts or your Fatal Attractions, for example.
Verity explicitly calls back to gems of that genre like What Lies Beneath (2000) and Fatal Attraction (1987).
…even when erotic thriller maestro Adrian Lyne came back to directing he made the thoroughly un-erotic and un-thrilling Deep Water.
Director
Paul Verhoeven
Critics invoke Verhoeven by name, and compare Verity to 1 of Verhoeven’s films.
Themes Visuals
On Verhoeven, rather than any one film
…secretly Paul Verhoeven-inspired erotica…
This needed a Paul Verhoeven or Karyn Kusama to unlock the project’s fullest unhinged potential.
Parts of Verity will have you wondering whether its intention is to resurrect the '80s and '90s erotic thrillers – your Basic Instincts or your Fatal Attractions, for example.
References to Dressed to Kill and Basic Instinct include borrowed wallpaper and an ice pick.
Much darker and more twisty than the weepy trauma dumps “It Ends With Us” or “Reminders of Him,”…
…you’d think after It Ends with Us, Regretting You, and Reminders of Him that I would have learned my lesson by now…
Only a few months ago, theatres got REMINDERS OF HIM (what’s with the double R’s).
(The others are “It Ends With Us,” “Regretting You” and “Reminders of HIm.”)
…only sparked titles like “Regretting You,” “It Ends With Us,” and “Reminders of Him.”
While film fans might know Colleen Hoover only as the author of novels adapted into romantic melodramas heavy on wish-fulfillment fantasies—It Ends with Us, Reminders of Him…
…which may explain why this adaptation has the most buzz since It Ends With Us…
Much darker and more twisty than the weepy trauma dumps “It Ends With Us” or “Reminders of Him,”…
…you’d think after It Ends with Us, Regretting You, and Reminders of Him that I would have learned my lesson by now…
As someone who has had to review every Hoover adaptation since It Ends With Us…
It started with IT ENDS WITH US two years ago…
Verity comes from a 2018 bestseller by Colleen ‘It Ends With Us’ Hoover…
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But in the end, the deep and dark twisted morals don’t really hit home like they’ve done in the past with classics like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Sunset Boulevard and so many more.
But in the end, the deep and dark twisted morals don’t really hit home like they’ve done in the past with classics like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Sunset Boulevard and so many more.
But in the end, the deep and dark twisted morals don’t really hit home like they’ve done in the past with classics like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Sunset Boulevard and so many more.