Dakota Johnson returns to erotic-thriller ground in Verity

Dakota Johnson is back in "Fifty Shades" territory — and this time, according to the Guardian's review, audiences may be "leaving teeth marks in the seatback in front of them. Or the back of someone's head. But not in a good way."

The film is Verity, adapted by screenwriter Nick Antosca from the novel by Colleen Hoover. Johnson plays Lowen, a struggling writer who is mysteriously approached by a legal team representing Verity Crawford, a mega-bestselling author played by Anne Hathaway. Crawford's recent indisposition has left her unable to finish her hugely lucrative novel series, and her people offer Lowen several shedloads of money to secretly ghostwrite the remainder of the darkly saucy page-turners.

Lowen accepts. She does so largely because she feels strangely drawn to Verity's handsome, sensitive husband Jeremy, played by Josh Hartnett. The assignment requires her to stay in the couple's gorgeous Vermont home, a secluded luxury villa of gigantic modernist proportions. There, she finds Verity immobile, using a wheelchair and unable to speak.

Then comes the discovery that upends everything. Lowen uncovers a manuscript by Verity that hints at a terrifying situation of which the world has no clue.

The Guardian's critic frames the release against a genuine appetite. The nation, the review argues, is crying out for a really enjoyable erotic mystery-thriller — a taste potentially at least as strong as the cosy-crime fetish currently dominating the cultural moment. The commercial success of Paul Feig's naughty-but-not-nice movie The Housemaid proves the demand exists, the review contends.

The recipe, as the critic lays it out, is familiar: a sexy encounter with a dishy yet maybe problematic nice-guy husband; a damaged and dangerous beautiful wife; a vulnerable yet gutsy young person who finds herself in the middle of their creepy scenario; and a secluded lakeside villa whose night-time corridors invite trembling tiptoeing.

Verity follows that formula to the letter — the review notes that in the drama, someone has such excitingly transgressive sex that they leave teeth marks on the headboard — but delivers an unconvincing mystery rather than the pleasure audiences crave. The verdict is blunt: this story of a struggling writer who agrees to ghostwrite for a bestselling author does not satisfy the thirst it sets out to exploit.

The film adds a high-profile big-screen credit to the ongoing wave of Colleen Hoover screen adaptations, and pairs Johnson — whose career was launched by the Fifty Shades franchise — with Hathaway and Hartnett under Antosca's script. Whether the Hoover pipeline can produce a thriller that critics as well as audiences embrace remains the open question for the genre's next outing.