VERITY
A twisty thriller that trades truth for desire.
Should You Watch It?
No. This is a movie even mature Christian adults should avoid. It's a steamy, erotic psychological thriller about obsession, manipulation, and the danger of building your own narrative in the place of truth.
While the twists and turns of the campy plot are occasionally entertaining, the predictable writing and shallow, unlikable characters make it a gimmicky movie dressed up as something more. If you're looking for a psychological thriller, pick something else, as montages of sexual content overshadow the plot.
Despite the main characters' corruption, the movie doesn't inherently say that evil is good. It warns you to watch out for becoming the very thing you hate. When you manipulate the truth, seek revenge, and give in to obsession, you become a villain yourself even if you believe your actions are justified.
This serves as a clear example of how sin and unchecked grief and anger cloud the mind and soul and turn you into someone else. But for a movie that reveals how deceptive sin is, its graphic sex and lack of redemption counteract the message.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESStruggling novelist Lowen Ashleigh receives a contract to complete the bestselling book series of one of her idols, Verity Crawford, who is injured in a car crash. To sort through the author’s notes, Lowen moves into the Crawford home with Verity’s husband, Jeremy, and their young son, Crew.
The family endures grief as Crew’s twin sister drowns in their backyard lake before Verity’s accident. Among Verity’s notes, Lowen discovers an autobiographical manuscript that reveals disturbing details about the Crawford family. As she digs deeper into the family's twisted secrets and grows closer to Jeremy, the line between writer, reader, reality, and fiction blurs.
Is It Any Good?
Two stars seem right for this steamy psychological thriller, which offers a few seeds of truth but buries them beneath excessive sexual content, disturbing themes, and a plot that often values shock over substance. Based on Colleen Hoover's book, the movie features strong performances, especially from Anne Hathaway, but cliché dialogue and a winding yet predictable plot leave the movie lacking.
Unrealistic violence also undermines credibility. Even genuine lovers of mysteries and thrillers may feel disappointed as the movie spends more screen time exploring a character's twisted sexual obsession than developing a truly compelling plot.
However, the story builds suspense well and keeps viewers intrigued, while enough polish keeps the movie from sinking into pure pulp. Although the characters' motivations often seem shallow, moments of genuine sympathy emerge for each of them.
In the end, the movie shows how manipulation, obsession, and revenge can destroy decent people. Yet its own excessive sexuality overwhelms that warning, turning a cautionary tale about moral corruption into entertainment that too often wallows in the very darkness it seeks to expose.
The Worldview
This movie holds a dark, Humanist worldview. By the end, truth, love, and morality blur into human desire. Rather than exposing evil and letting good win, the story embraces its darkest material and sometimes revels in it: a mother who allegedly wants to kill her child, erotic obsession, envy, rage that turns into revenge, and over-the-top violence.
Still, these elements can warn of what happens when desire runs a life with no moral brakes. James 1:15 teaches that desire gives birth to sin, and sin brings forth death. One character hates another so deeply that she turns into the very thing she despised, and she realizes it too late.
The movie shows how quickly love curdles into possessiveness and suffering turns into an excuse for bloodshed. It also exposes where the modern idea of truth as a personal story, rather than objective reality, leads.
From a Christian perspective, though, the movie names the problem but holds back the solution. Scripture tells us truth stays certain, love gives itself away, and forgiveness sets people free. The story taps into a real fear that the people we love could commit terrible evil, yet no one repents, forgives, or chooses a higher path. Viewers get a cautionary tale about human nature, with no hope that redemption remains possible.
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
A strong humanist worldview where even compassionate characters eventually commit great sins. Virtues are mentioned only for the purpose of being corrupted while murder is presented as a valid solution that goes without consequence. The truth is twisted so much that no one can be certain if there even is a truth
Foul Language
About 13 obscenities includung 12 "f" words and at least one "c" word, about 12 "GD" profanities, several strong profanities using the name of Jesus, and a mention of vomit
Violence
Strong violence where a character chokes another character and then suffocates her to death, and someone nearly suffocates an infant with a pillow, plus strong bloody violence such as a car runs over a biker and splashes a character with what looks like a bucket of blood, a close up shows one character slowly pushing a thumbtack into another character's open palm, characters bite each other's lips until they bleed, and a graphic description of murder; a child drowns off screen
Sex
Very strong and strong sexual content includes multiple montages of premarital and marital sex that avoid showing genitals but get as close as possible, characters pull off each other's underwear, a voice over describes frontal and oral sex as characters engage in it, a woman repeatedly bites into a wooden headboard during sex, couples kiss passionately and lick frosting off each other, a woman masturbates in the bath, and two women share a brief passionate kiss
Nudity
Full upper frontal female nudity and full rear female nudity, including a woman who appears totally nude in the shower and in a bathtub with her genital area obscured underwater, plus full rear male nudity, upper male nudity, a bare pregnant belly, and multiple scenes of women in only their underwear or a robe
Alcohol Use
Characters drink throughout with one scenario of near excessive use
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
Characters smoke occasionally, twice one character irresponsibly uses drugs to reduce stress, a character is drugged;
Miscellaneous Immorality
Lying, deceit, manipulation, revenge, envy, encouraged murder, hatred.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
How does the movie distinguish or fail to distinguish between love, desire, and possession? What does Christian love require that mere attraction or obsession doesn't? 1 Corinthians 13:4–5
How does grief shape the characters’ choices, and when does the desire for justice cross the line into revenge? How can Christians respond to deep suffering without allowing anger to lead them into wrongdoing? Romans 12:21
How does envy affect the characters’ relationships and choices in Verity, and how can comparing ourselves with others distort the way we see what we already have? 1 Corinthians 13:4
How does Verity show the consequences of hiding, manipulating, or refusing to accept the truth, and why does Christianity call us to pursue truth even when it is painful? John 8:32
The Final Word
Despite some intrigue and strong performances, VERITY manipulates its audience as much as its characters, and its overt eroticism should give even the most mature Christian serious pause. Fans of psychological thrillers won't find much here either, since explicit sex, predictable writing, and muddled ambiguity sink the story's appeal. For believers and any adult who craves a good story with real substance, this one earns a firm pass.
