Colleen Hoover’s latest book-to-movie adaptation is her most explicit yet—a misguided attempt at a dark thriller that substitutes tension for sexually charged infidelity. Simulated sex, partial nudity, lots of language, domestic abuse and depictions of a mother murdering her own child all follow.
Verity Crawford has it all.
The handsome husband, the extravagant lake house, a beautiful child, the career as a best-selling thriller author. “A career built on villains,” according to Verity, as her books are written from the perspective of the antagonist.
Lowen Ashleigh, on the other hand, has none of what Verity has.
While Verity’s interviews are viewed online by millions, Lowen’s meet and greet at a local bookstore garners the attention of only a handful of curious stragglers. She is about to get evicted from her apartment, and the only thing the passing of her mother left her with was a heaping pile of debt.
Things are looking dire for Lowen—that is, until Verity’s husband, Jeremy, makes an offer that any writer would die to receive.
According to Jeremy, a recent car accident has put Verity in a state of limited brain function. This leaves a book unfinished—and two more with outlines prepared but no words on the page. Should Lowen finish the popular series, her monetary prize will be that of half a million dollars.
And as for the eviction? No matter! She can just stay with Jeremy, Verity and their son, Crew, in Vermont.
However, just like Verity’s novels, Lowen’s newfound living situation is not as it initially seems. The Crawford family hosts a handful of dark secrets, but in this house, the truth is relative to who’s telling the story.
For what it’s worth, Jeremy seems to be a loving father to Crew. Initially, he seems to allow Lowen to fill some roles that his wife used to for Crew’s benefit (though those altruistic intentions do not last long). Jeremy tells Lowen that he prioritized therapy for his son when Verity had her accident, and he would gladly put Crew back into counseling should Crew request it or show signs of needing further professional help.
Jeremy wears a shirt which features an album cover from a band called Jesus and the Mary Chain.
Verity claims that before her pregnancy, she and Jeremy “worshipped” each other.
With all the carnal activity going on in the Crawford home, it’s a miracle any of these writers had time to get much writing done.
Lowen finds a copy of Verity’s autobiographical manuscript and reads bits of it throughout the film. As the words flash onto the screen, audiences see multiple flashbacks to intimate moments between Verity and Jeremy. Verity sports lingerie in several of these scenes, and her husband is shirtless. Other scenes imply nudity but keep private parts out of sight of the camera. Sounds and movements of their intercourse are obvious in all. The manuscript describes their sex life in detail, including an especially graphic moment of oral sex.
A married man sleeps with a woman who is not his wife a few times, with both characters groping and kissing passionately. Simulated sex is once again on full display. One scene communicates that the man and his mistress are having sex in the same bed that he and his wife used to have sex in.
A woman masturbates in a bath, at first envisioning a sexual situation with a married man, but then shifting to a scene of her kissing a woman instead. The bathing woman’s breasts are visible throughout the majority of this scene.
The film shows a few different female characters in the shower, with sensitive parts mostly covered by some intentional camera work. Both male and female backsides are visible in a few scenes.
Tight, short, cleavage-baring outfits and dresses are worn by female characters on a few occasions.
We are told that a man makes big life decisions for himself and his partner while they have sex, such as moving in together or getting married.
Verity’s books are said to be violent, seductive thrillers. A character listens to a reading, which includes descriptions of bloody, revenge-infused murders.
A mother learns of the danger of sudden infant death syndrome and how it can look very similar to suffocation. The woman considers using a pillow to smother her own baby, briefly holding a pillow to her child’s face. She is interrupted by her husband. The same mother attempts to drown both of her children by flipping over a canoe far from land. When one of them survives the encounter, the mother seems to feel nothing but irritation.
On two separate occasions, characters kissing bite their partners on the lip, drawing blood. A character to presses a thumb tack into Verity’s hand, attempting to see if the woman is faking her injuries. A character sustains a small cut on her finger.
In a visceral scene, a young child accidentally bites down on a butter knife, causing blood to gush from the wound. It is later mentioned that he needed six stitches.
[Spoiler warning] A man attempts to stage his wife’s suicide in a car crash; however, she survives this malicious murder attempt and sustains serious physical and mental harm. Later in the film, he strangles her, until his mistress convinces him that the crime should look like an accident. He then smothers her instead, telling police that she must have wandered into a nearby lake and drowned due to her compromised mental state.
Audiences are subjected to a barrage of foul language, with words both spoken and written out on the screen. There are about 10 audible F-words; at least half as many more show up in Verity’s manuscript. A use each of “ass,” “h—” and the c-word are thrown in the mix, as well as five misuses of God’s name (one of them paired with “d–n.”)
Characters drink wine, beer, and hard liquor socially and frequently. Lowen vapes on multiple occasions; a few characters smoke as well. Drugs are used to sedate injured people, and there’s talk of prescription medication.
Lowen takes Xanax pills to calm herself down on a regular basis. A character is drugged and then physically harmed in their intoxicated state.
Based on what Lowen reads in Verity’s autobiography, it seems Verity did not want to become pregnant—and that leads to some very disturbing thoughts spoken or printed onscreen. Initially, Verity is concerned that her husband will not find her beautiful in her pregnant state. This sentiment quickly morphs into something much more sinister, though, as she describes the “grotesque” infants growing inside her and essentially eating her from the inside.
Verity concludes that she must accept the supposed “personal hell” of loving her children for the rest of their lives, but she doesn’t act very loving: After Jeremy leaves for work, Verity intentionally unplugs her kids’ baby monitor, letting them cry as she goes back to sleep. All this crying tires her babies out, rendering them calm by the time Jeremy gets home.
In multiple scenes, Lowen wears Verity’s now unused clothes and jewelry—a decision that certainly feels a bit icky considering Verity’s physical and mental state.
Jeremy lies to Lowen about how he and Verity found out about Lowen as an author.
A woman vomits after reading a description of the death of a child at the hands of their mother.
When Lowen asks Jeremy which of his wife’s books is his favorite, he responds that he hasn’t read any of her work beyond her first novel.
“I didn’t like being in her head,” he claims, quickly ending Lowen’s line of questioning.
The film, however, spends a significant amount of time in Verity’s head—and Jeremy was right: It’s not a pleasant place to be.
Of the four theatrically released Colleen Hoover book adaptations Hollywood has cranked out the last few years, Verity is easily the most sadistic and explicit. The entire film seems to exist only to lure its audience around another dark corner, into yet another twist, sinking further and further into the depths of depravity through infidelity and murder—including the murder of a child.
(While the film is plenty depraved on its own, the book it’s based off includes even worse content, including a failed abortion attempt, and the murders of multiple more characters—another of whom is a child.)
The film seems to wink at its audience, whispering, “This is pretty messed up, right?” Everyone in the cast seems carry that tone here, with all the performances exuding a pulpy sense of melodrama that contrasts with the film’s darker elements—all to sprint to an ending that hints at the entirety of the characters’ decisions being based around nothing but lies.
“The truth is most fun to corrupt,” Verity reports to an interviewer. But when twists and turns cease, and the credits roll, I imagine many audience members will leave with a feeling of icky emptiness forced upon them by an entirely vapid film that insists it’s always few steps ahead.
Jonah Parker’s first interaction with Plugged In came when he was just five years old, after his parents read a review for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and deemed the content too intense for him. What started out as a contentious relationship between Jonah and a staff of reviewers who knew not of his existence would later turn into an appreciation for the site’s ability to present media content in a way that was accurate and fair. Jonah enjoys analyzing how our entertainment echoes the creativity of our Creator while finding glimpses of Biblical truths within every genre. He believes that Robert Pattinson’s Batmobile is the perfect mix of cool and practical.
