Four adaptations in, and Coleen Hoover still hasn’t had a good movie, writes Carter Smith
Coleen Hoover’s fourth book-to-screen adaptation, Verity, starts with a fatal crash. A man on his pedal bike is left lifeless on a taxi. An ordinary day turned traumatic. Blood splattered all over Lowen Ashleigh’s (An uninspired Dakota Johnson) face. It’s a nice change of pace for an author who has reduced herself to borderline trauma porn in most of her books.
This shocking start is then immediately followed by a 30-second-long egregious product placement for Beats by Dre. Buy our headphones; they look good even with blood covered all over them. This set of sequences sums up the duology of Hoover – she is constantly on the precipice of great ideas, but undermines herself at every turn with her own corporate greed.
Verity is another sick, twisted and perverted story, which lends itself much better to a supposed thriller than a cutesy romance, but is still a chore to get through. That’s quite a feat when your cast has Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Johnson in it. They all try their best, but there’s not much you can do with such a weak script.
It’s a supposed thriller/mystery about what happens when Lowen is tasked with ghostwriting famous author Verity Crawford’s dark, deranged book series. It seems like a dream come true for the failing author, but secrets about Verity start to appear once Lowen starts living at her and her husband Jeremy’s home. It’s hardly a thrill-a-minute. It’s barely a thrill in 114 minutes. It’s climax of these things are lackluster as well.
I’m sure Hoover would never admit to such, but the film feels like it only exists as a way for her to justify her own sadistic ideas. It’s as if she’s trying to explain to the audience that she is actually a misunderstood genius. She isn’t. Though this may be on the higher end of her adaptations, this is still nothing more than mildly erotic scenes with lacklustre writing surrounding them.
I think it’s time to stop with turning her books into movies. It’s tried and tested to be nothing more than bottom-of-the-barrel smut. While we are at it, let’s give Sally Rooney’s punishment to Hoover instead. It would be much more warranted.
- Verity is currently in cinemas
