Some films are best watched in a crowded cinema, and some are best watched at home with the lights low and a friend ready to argue with you afterwards. The screen version of a much-discussed Colleen Hoover novel clearly belongs to the second group, and now it has arrived on digital platforms where it can do exactly that.
The premise is wonderfully claustrophobic. A struggling writer accepts a job that seems too good to refuse: finishing a bestselling series for an author who can no longer write after a terrible accident. To do it, she has to move into the family home and dig through piles of notes. Among them she finds a private manuscript that reads like a confession, and from that moment every room in the house feels a little colder.
What makes the story work is the way it keeps shifting your sympathy. The film places Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett in a tight triangle where nobody is fully trustworthy, and it asks the audience to decide whose version of events to believe. That is why readers of the novel still debate its final pages, and why the film has divided critics in a similar way.
Its success in cinemas also proves something worth noting. A modestly budgeted, adult psychological thriller can still draw big crowds when it is built on a story people already love to discuss. Studios have spent years chasing franchises; this is a reminder that a strong book club favourite can be just as powerful.
For box office figures, the full cast and the details of the home release, see the article on Verity coming home. Plan your viewing carefully, though: this is one ending you will want to talk about the moment the credits roll.
