5 Movies To Watch If You Like Anne Hathaway's Verity

This article discusses domestic abuse and sexual assault.

Colleen Hoover adaptations have been making waves in Hollywood over the past few years, with films like "It Ends With Us," "Reminders of Him," and "Regretting You" raking in bucks at the box office. That's why it's no surprise that "Verity," one of Hoover's darkest books, got a star-studded big-screen adaptation courtesy of director Michael Showalter ("The Big Sick," "The Idea of You"), screenwriter Nick Antosca (who worked on the Apple TV adaptation of "Cape Fear"), and stars Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett. So what's the deal with "Verity," generally?

The film opens on Johnson's downtrodden, relatively unsuccessful fiction writer Lowen Ashleigh (Hoover has never met an absurd name she doesn't love), who's heading to a meeting with a huge publishing house when she ends up soaked in a cyclist's blood after a horrifying accident. After a mysterious man gives her the literal shirt off his back, she heads to the meeting and reunites with him ... and it turns out he's Jeremy Crawford (Hartnett), husband of the massively popular dark thriller writer Verity Crawford (Hathaway). After the death of her daughter and a car accident, Verity is in a catatonic state and unable to finish her popular series, so Jeremy asks Lowen to move into their home and complete the novels — but is Verity really catatonic, and should Lowen pursue the spark she feels between her and Jeremy?

This psychosexual story filled with unreliable narrators and flashbacks is campy, dishy, and generally wild ... so what could possibly follow it? Actually, we think all of the movies on this list are better than "Verity," and arguably, all of them paved the way for this film's resounding success. Here are five movies you should watch after "Verity."

After Gillian Flynn's masterful thriller "Gone Girl" hit shelves in 2012, every book and movie that followed in its footsteps desperately tried to recapture its magic ("The Girl on the Train," which released in 2016, attempts to follow the exact same blueprint to middling results), and there's no question that a book and film like "Verity" owes an enormous debt to "Gone Girl." In both the novel and the 2014 film (which is directed by David Fincher and adapted by Flynn herself), we meet Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), a handsome loser whose marriage is on the rocks after he moved his New York-born wife Amy Elliott Dunne (Rosamund Pike) back to his small Missouri hometown to help take care of his ailing mother, on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary. One problem: Amy is gone, and the Dunne house is in disarray. As Nick considers the possibility that Amy might have been kidnapped, the police arrive to investigate, and the audience is treated to flashbacks based on Amy's diary entries. 

"Gone Girl," in the words of Bill Hader's breakout "Saturday Night Live" character Stefon, has everything. Again, we can't stress this enough: a movie like "Verity" wouldn't even exist without the presence and influence of "Gone Girl," but they also share unreliable narrators, varying timelines, and antiheroes (and antiheroines) that need to be experienced to be believed. "Gone Girl" is one of the best thriller novels and best adaptations around, and if you haven't seen it, watch it after "Verity."

If you enjoyed "Verity" but wanted it to be campier and sillier — in a very self-aware way — you should definitely check out "A Simple Favor," Paul Feig's adaptation of Darcey Bell's 2017 novel of the same name. Released in 2018, "A Simple Favor" begins with one of "mommy blogger" Stephanie Smothers' (Anna Kendrick) videos, but instead of making cookies or decorations, she's asking for help finding her missing friend Emily Nelson (Blake Lively, having the time of her life and clad exclusively in red-bottomed Christian Louboutin shoes). After Emily and Stephanie meet duirng a routine school pick-up, they become extremely unlikely friends — Stephanie tends to wear cutesy little socks, not designer shoes, and she initially has trouble keeping up with the maniacally martini-swilling Emily — so it makes sense that Emily asks Stephanie to watch her son while she's caught up at her high-flying fashion job in Manhattan. The problem? Emily never comes home, leaving Stephanie to deal with her kid and Emily's husband Sean Townsend ("Crazy Rich Asians" alum Henry Golding). So what happened to Emily? Why is Stephanie finding herself attracted to Sean? Most importantly, what does Stephanie need to uncover about Emily's dark past?

We won't spoil the absolutely absurd and frankly delightful twists and turns found within "A Simple Favor Here," but truthfully, this is the exact movie "Verity" should have been. Thanks to Feig's canny direction and a crackling script from Jessica Sharzer, "A Simple Favor" easily transcends its source material and becomes a camp classic in its own right. Pair it with an ice-cold, bone-dry gin martini and watch it after "Verity."

You know what's wild? Only one of Alfred Hitchcock's universally beloved thrillers won the Academy Award for best picture, and it's not "Vertigo" or "Psycho" — it's "Rebecca," Hitchcock's 1940 adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 Gothic novel. If you're at all familiar with the story of "Rebecca," you can see that it's a pretty obvious blueprint for "Verity" and other psychosexual thrillers ... so here's what you need to know.

When "Rebecca" begins after a brief but impactful prologue about a building known as "Manderley," we follow the story's unnamed narrator and protagonist (Joan Fontaine) through European travels as she works as a paid companion to an odious and wealthy older woman. During said travels, the young woman meets the enigmatic and handsome widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), who ends up asking her to marry him and whisking her away to his estate in the English countryside ... Manderley. 

While she attempts to navigate life as the wife of a wealthy man with status, the new Mrs. de Winter also faces off against the estate's bizarre and even cruel housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who won't stop talking about Maxim's first wife Rebecca. If you're familiar with the love triangle in "Verity" between a young woman, a troubled man, and his absent wife, you'll understand the debt it owes to "Rebecca," and you absolutely can't miss this Gothic classic shot by one of the greatest filmmakers to ever do it. Just don't watch the 2020 remake of "Rebecca" starring Armie Hammer and Lily James; it's pretty bad. 

The second Paul Feig film on this list isn't quite as good as "A Simple Favor," but like both that film and "Verity," it's a high-octane, lurid literary adaptation from a book that's, well, not particularly great (in this case, the novel of the same name by Freida McFadden). In this hit 2025 film, Sydney Sweeney plays Millie Calloway, a young woman who recently finished a prison sentence and is living out of her car — and who can't believe her luck when the beautiful and wealthy Nina Winchester (a stunning Amanda Seyfried) hires her to work as a housemaid in her palatial home. Things start going awry immediately, though, when Nina starts creating problems and reacting bizarrely to Millie's mere presence; as Nina grows more erratic, Millie finds an ally in Nina's handsome and seemingly kind husband Andrew ("It Ends With Us" supporting player Brandon Sklenar), until the movie's real game is revealed.

A fair warning: "The Housemaid" deals extensively with domestic abuse, so be sure to check any and all trigger warnings before you queue up this psychosexual thriller. With Seyfried delivering a tour-de-force performance (seriously, she should have an Oscar for playing Nina) and Feig's typical wry direction — and a smart script from Rebecca Sonnenshine — "The Housemaid" is just extremely fun from beginning to end, even as it gets extremely dark, extremely bloody, and extremely intense. By the time Taylor Swift's "I Did Something Bad" plays over the end credits, you'll support women's rights and women's wrongs.

It's quite possible that Cary Joji Fukuaga's 2011 adaptation of "Jane Eyre," the massively influential dark romance written by Charlotte Brontë, flew under your radar upon its release. If you love "Verity," though, this is another pick — like "Rebecca" — where you can clearly see the story's influence on writers like Colleen Hoover. Mia Wasikowska plays the titular Jane, who endured a difficult childhood as an orphan and thinks that her life will be forever changed when, as an adult, she meets the dashing and wealthy Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender) while working as a governess at his property of Thornfield Hall. Despite Mr. Rochester's apparent betrothal to the beautiful Blanche Ingram (Imogen Poots), Jane finds herself developing feelings for him, and he returns them ardently.

There's just one small problem, and it has to do with an attic and a spate of small fires — and even though "Jane Eyre" is an old story that's probably familiar to most people, we won't get into the specifics just in case you don't know how this wonderfully twisted story ends. Wasikowska and Fassbender are excellent and flanked by great performers like Dame Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, Sally Hawkins, Tamzin Merchant, and Simon McBurney, making this adaptation of "Jane Eyre" a worthy watch once you're finished with "Verity."

As for "Verity," it's in theaters now.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).