Review: 'Verity' gives its trio of actors a juicy meal of red meat, tasty if you're in the mood

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Set us as preferred Did director Michael Showalter just nail the Colleen Hoover adaptation? The third major movie version of the blockbuster author’s work hits the big screen with “Verity” and things are starting to lock into place.Much darker and more twisty than the weepy trauma dumps “It Ends With Us” or “Reminders of Him,” “Verity” is high camp with a wink, a hair toss and just enough bite to draw blood.The screenplay is adapted by Nick Antosca, known for tawdry television melodramas (“The Act,” “Cape Fear”).

His script is remarkably faithful to the book, just condensed for efficiency.It helps that Hoover’s novel, with shades of “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca,” is full of wild turns and insane details and really only needs a movie-star makeover to work as a film: a few nips, tucks and a flashy exterior.Showalter and Antosca take the bones and juicy bits of Hoover’s book and make it more elegant, refined and contemporary, but keep all the craziness that viewers crave.

The film opens with a graphic car accident that results in struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) covered in gore.When a stranger comes to her aid, one man’s death becomes another couple’s portentous meet-cute, as Lowen encounters Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) for the first time.

Movies From a new “Resident Evil” reboot from the director of “Weapons” to Oscar contenders starring Mikey Madison and Tom Cruise, here are the movies we’ll be at this fall.The pair are about to find themselves in a complex psychosexual throuple with Jeremy’s wife, Verity (Anne Hathaway), a mega-successful novelist and genuine celebrity.Verity can’t finish her book series for mysterious reasons, so Jeremy hires Lowen to do so for her.

When she arrives at their imposing Vermont mansion to go through Verity’s notes, Lowen discov...