Despite the gorgeous seductive female leads of Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, this sexy, psychological thriller presented plot points with a number of problems. Hathaway, once again, shows she can play anything, having acted in 5 very different roles isn the past year. This was an extremely unusual part for her. We were dubious of this plot from the get-go and ultimately, we just didn’t buy it.
The first scenes are bloody awful showing a gory car accident on the streets of New York City. Not hurt, but splattered with blood, an attractive guy help get her cleaned up. Of course, she meets him again at a business meeting that changes her life.
Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) is a paralyzed accident victim who is a celebrated author followed by a huge fan base. She’s the super star writer of sexy, cheesy crime novels. Because of her debilitating accident, she can no longer keeping churning out new books. Her publisher wants to pay an exorbitant amount to hire a ghost writer who can digest Verity’s huge cache of notes and secretly write more books writing in the popular author’s voice.
Director Michael Showalter took liberties along with Writer Nick Antosca (Cape Fear, 2026) changing several major details from the novel by Colleen Hoover. they are significant changes. Hoover also wrote It Ends With Us. the film version starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni which became the huge, ugly, legal battle. In this film, we saw a fatal flaw changed from the book involving Verity’s caretaker, Anna, (Irina Dvorovenko) in relation to her taking care of her paralyzed patient.
Down on her luck, barely-known crime novelist Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) gets hired to ghost write the next tome, and continue to create more books using Verity’s notes by moving into her luxurious Vermont estate where she is kept hidden from the public. She lives with her handsome husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), and their young son, Crew. Lowen already knows Verity’s work, but shockingly finds plenty of revealing notes. We get to see in flashback the seductive, then sexy courtship before she married Jeremy. Even in her non-communicative state, he is so loving and loyal. But having an attractive ghost writer around made us question what could happen next.
Lowen sees how so very attentive he is to his broken wife and their adorable young son, Crew (Brady Wagner). But tragedy has struck the family twice, with Verity’s accident, and with Crew’s twin, Harper, (Sienna Kulovitz). Their daughter tragically drowned in the lake right behind their house.
Lowen gets to go through all of Verity’s notes, also finding a hidden thumb drive with her manifesto memoir written awhile back giving her an intimate glance at Verity’s ideas, writing, and relationships. Lowen finds it difficult to discern fact from fiction as she sees clues and questions about who and what really caused the tragedies to Harper and Verity.
As much as Verity is shown staring motionless into space, we also thought Johnson’s expressions as Lowen were pretty lifeless. Her main attraction in every closeup are her puffy and perfectly sculpted, shiny, ruby red lips. Lowen is known for her sexy body, and Director Michael Showalter and Cinematographer Jim Frohna (Big Little Lies, The Idea of You) take advantage, shooting her nude in keeping with the kind of prurient books that made Verity a sought after celebrity author. The shots of Johnson undressing, nude bathing and in sexy outfits, seemed gratuitous to help get that R rating.
For a script that purports to be about plotting suspense and crime, it is lame, predictable and a malfeasance. Yes, Showalter successfully creates a couple of effective jump scares, but unfortunately, they don’t save this film. We just didn’t buy it.
Amazon MGM Studios 1 Hour 57 Minutes R
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