‘Verity’ review: Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson’s thriller is sexy — but smooth and predictable

Will the attack of the cheap “Gone Girl” clones never cease? 

How many more outwardly perfect couples with immaculate, modern homes that conceal dark secrets can Hollywood possibly come up with?

Plenty, actually, since the appetite for hot trash is bottomless. Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively’s “A Simple Favor” grossed $93 million in 2018, and last year’s tawdry “The Housemaid” with Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried did a massive $400 million. People go wild for this schlock.

And so, to keep the lucrative ball rolling comes the predictable “Verity” from the novel by Colleen Hoover, whose “It Ends With Us,” “Regretting You” and “Reminders of Him” were all big screen hits. The gorgeous duo this time is Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson.

Here’s another shimmering Architectural Digest house populated by a pair of well-dressed urban sophisticates with big, soapy, hidden problems. Like in “Simple Favor” and “Housemaid,” a recently arrived woman throws the couple’s lives into chaos. Or, more likely, beneath the enviable facade, they were already pretty chaotic to begin with.

The party crasher here is Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling New York author with a Kennebunkport name. She’s played by Johnson in a retreat back to schlocky “Fifty Shades” territory.

One afternoon, en route to an important meeting in Midtown, a car slams into a biker and sprays blood all over Lowen in an almost funny slasher-flick style. Well, I laughed. Lowen, however, does not. A nearby man with only the purest of intentions, Jeremy (plaid heartthrob Josh Hartnett), offers to take care of the freaked out girl and even gives her the shirt off his back. So kind! 

Jeremy then reveals in the bathroom that he recently had to drag his dead 8-year-old daughter out of a lake. Nice to meet you, too?

But minutes later Lowen is in a conference room with the very same guy. It turns out that Jeremy is the husband of renowned mystery author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), who needs the help of a ghostwriter to finish her latest novel as she recovers from an injury — a gig they’re offering Lowen. The pay is all right, but more than the zip she’s earning. For three books over two years, Lowen will bank $250,000. The deal is that she’ll have to move in with Verity, sexy, sensitive Jeremy and their adorable son, Crew.  

Literally poor Lowen has no other choice but to live in somebody else’s fabulous abode for free while getting paid! Oh, the hardship!

Yet when she enters their forest manse overlooking a snow-covered lake, she discovers the condition of Verity is much worse than the public is aware of. The writer is paralyzed, wheelchair-bound and can no longer speak.

Suffice it to say, outside of narrations and flashbacks to her early days as a mother, Verity is not Hathaway at her most expressive. She sure doesn’t sing “I Dreamed A Dream.” She mostly stares a stare.

In Verity’s office, snooping Lowen discovers a document draft buried on a thumb drive — a kind of free-form memoir in which Verity spills the often nefarious secrets of her life and marriage. This is when I really started to miss “Gone Girl” and David Fincher. Because while the revelations are ugly, they’re not truly surprising or gripping. 

Rather than add to the mystique, the middle section drags on and on like the end of a bad party where everyone is too nervous to be the first to leave. Lowen grows closer to the attractive man she shares a kitchen with. Um, duh. She’s also paranoid and believes Verity is watching her from a window. Another inevitability.

I’ve always liked Johnson. “Madame Web,” of course, is a blight on the IMDB pages of many. As Lowen, though, she’s just a little too cool. Her voice has the breathiness of a woman hiding in a closet from a serial killer, but also the calm of somebody sipping herbal tea. She’s alluring and unflappable, even when she’s convinced she could be living in a house of horrors. 

That’s also true of Michael Showalter’s pleasant direction — ever so visually polished and dramatically smooth. Thriller isn’t his genre, though he certainly hops around — “Wet Hot American Summer,” “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” “The Idea of You.” The film’s boring center is made much more so by the squeaky-cleanness of everything and the prim and proper acting.

The end, for those who haven’t read the novel, will generate some dinner debate. What did or didn’t Verity do? What will Lowen do? The resolve is a little shaky, but at least it’s not certifiably insane like “The Housemaid”’s. 

My favorite part of “Verity,” really, was Hathaway’s narration. Her sumptuous voice is well-suited to sneakiness and she’s a treat to listen to. Think Andy’s machinations in “The Devil Wears Prada” or spicy Catwoman in “The Dark Knight Rises.” Penelope in “The Odyssey” as well. This teases us though. It’s frustrating that we don’t get to see the actress in full-flight. 

A better thriller starring Hathaway is “Eileen.” But fans of Hoover’s popcorn oeuvre — Hoovre? — might not dig that one. There’s no luxury real-estate or male models to be found. Just a crummy little one-bed and a juvenile prison.