Are horror novelists psychopaths? Can a film be both camp and boring? Does it matter whether you’re laughing with it or at it? Colleen Hoover’s best selling novel, Verity, goes to dark places. It surprised readers of her lighter romantic fare. Michael Showalter’s film adaptation reduces the tale to a boiler-plate Lifetime thriller. And sucks out much of the fun.

Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a depressed novelist who has yet to build an audience. She’s hired by the affable Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett) to ghostwrite the final novels for his comatose wife Verity (Anne Hathaway). Verity’s novels are told from the perspective of murderous femme fatales. But when Lowen finds Verity’s scary unpublished memoir, she wonders where the line is between truth and fiction. The plot references classics like Rebecca and Leave Her to Heaven. But ultimately boils down to how fast Lowen can read a book.

Everyone here is slumming. Hathaway vamps. Hartnet himbos. Johnson does her sleepy robot thing. When her character announces she has “resting bored face” I guffawed in an otherwise silent cinema. At this point Johnson seems to be trolling us. Shortly afterwards I watched her SNL performance as “Mean Scary Girlfriend.” This is her lane. She’s not a romantic heroine. Would the film have worked better if she swapped roles with Hathaway? Or if they’d cast someone with a bit more spark?

As for the mystery itself, we’re initially presented with a handful of possible solutions. Then asked to wait while Johnson pursues a chemistry free romance with Hartnett. This is where the erotic thriller elements come in. Hathaway and Johnson get naked while Hartnett briefly flashes his smooth bum. (Male objectification is stingy for a film marketed at straight women.) But the intimacy choreography is boring. A scene where a woman “bites the headboard of her bed” in a fit of ecstasy looks absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes what’s on the page doesn’t translate.

Film critics have been harsh on Verity. Some fans of the novel have defended it. The opening weekend found an audience. Will you check it out next weekend? Have you seen it already? Spoiler tag your thoughts below.

You can read more of my reviews on The Avocado, Letterboxd and Serializd. My podcast, Rainbow Colored Glasses, can be found here.