5 Best Movies To Watch After Anne Hathaway's Verity

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Want some more movies in the vein of "Verity"? We've got you covered.

Michael Showalter's "Verity," starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett, is based on the shadowy, sexy novel by Colleen Hoover, the prolific author behind "It Ends with Us." You can read our review here. In the movie, Hathaway plays Verity Crawford, an author of dark mystery thrillers who has recently been rendered comatose by a violent car accident, something that's been kept hidden from the public. Johnson plays a much less successful author named Lowen Ashleigh who is hired in secret to serve as the ghostwriter of Verity's upcoming novels. Lowen moves into Verity's house, impressed with Verity's handsome and thoughtful husband Jeremy (Hartnett). 

While doing research, Lowen finds a secret copy of Verity's in-progress autobiography, and learns that the author didn't just like to write about sinister villainesses, but may have actually been one herself. And that's just the first plot wrinkle of many. "Verity" playfully examines the nature of truth (just as the title, a riff on the Latin word "veritas," would have you believe) and heaps in a few spoonfuls of motherly resentment, lust, and betrayal for good measure. The movie is a box office success, attracting audiences with its prurience and twisted story. It's a classic sexually charged potboiler. 

"Verity" is also part of a larger tradition of sexy thrillers that stretches back many, many years. Lurid dramas about lust and betrayal are perhaps as old as humanity, and the genre has certainly never died out in cinemas. One can watch any of the five films below and get a similar thrill that you experienced with "Verity," and perhaps in an even more potent dose.

It wouldn't be too wild a suggestion to say that Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca," based on Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel, is a ghost story. The film's protagonist, played by Joan Fontaine, meets a dashing widower named Maxim de Winter while on the French Riviera, and the two form a flirtation in sexy Monte Carlo locales. She eventually becomes Mrs. de Winter, and moves into Maxim's massive mansion, Manderlay. 

Of course, a mystery arises. What happened to the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca? It was said that she drowned, but she seems to be lingering around Manderly in a very palpable fashion, almost a spirit. Rebecca's memory is kept alive by the eerie Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who shows the new Mrs. de Winter into her predecessor's bedroom, revealing how empty and neglected it has been. In a scene fraught with sapphic tension, Danvers shows off some of the dead wife's lingerie to Joan Fontaine, commenting that it is completely see-through. Rebecca was very sexual, it seems, and it's implied that Mrs. Danvers was in lust with her. (At least, that's the way I read the scene.) 

What does Maxim want with his new wife? Was there foul play with his first marriage? Did she really drown, or is Maxim keeping secrets? I shan't reveal the twists in Hitchcock's movie, other than to say they serve as a template for all sexual thrillers that followed. The film makes one uneasy, and /Film has gone into detail about how Hitchcock subtly constructed that feeling. "Rebecca" is Gothic, shadowy, and gloriously theatrical. It was a hit when it was released, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. 

Quel scandale! When Paul Verhoeven's "Basic Instinct" was released back in 1992, it caused a lot of hand-wringing. Not only was the film full of sex and nudity, but the plot revolved around a murder that took place while a man was tied to a bed mid-coitus and stabbed with an ice pick. 

The victim is a rock star named Johnny Boz, while the prime suspect is Boz's girlfriend, the vulpine Catherine Tramell, a slinky bisexual author of crime novels. Catherine is one of '90s cinema's great characters, as she is unapologetic for her appetites. One can understand why homicide detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) would be seduced by her. 

Of course, the longer Nick spends time with Catherine, and the more he has sex with her, the more he begins to suspect that she may still be capable of tying up a man and ice picking him to death. Everything in the movie is frank and sexual and, thanks to the notoriously sleazy screenwriter Joe Eszterhas ("Showgirls"), possesses an unsavory undercurrent that is just too delicious.

You likely know all about the leg-crossing scene from "Basic Instinct," as it left a mark on pop culture. Sharon Stone has gone on the record about how she feels about the infamous scene, writing in her autobiography "The Beauty of Living Twice" that she was tricked by Paul Verhoeven into doing it, and that she slapped him when she found out about the alleged subterfuge. (Verhoeven denies this.)

"Basic Instinct" cost $49 million to make, but earned an impressive $353 million back. It's astonishing to think, in prudish 2026, that such a gloriously forthright film, open about its horniness and sex scenes, would be as massive as that.

François Ozon's 2003 thriller "Swimming Pool" follows a British mystery author named Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) as she is beset with a frustrating case of writer's block. To clear her head, her publisher puts Sarah up in his luxurious vacation home in Lacoste in Southeast France. The house is nice, but it seems to come with a mysterious visitor in the form of Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), a libidinous young woman who claims to be the illegitimate daughter of Sarah's publisher.

Julie takes full advantage of her father's house, crashing there and taking her one-night stands there. Sarah, meanwhile, enters a strange sexually competitive state with Julie. They flirt with the same man in one scene. Naturally, lies begin to slowly accumulate, sex is wielded as a weapon, and not everyone makes out of the film alive. Because the situation is so lurid overall, it inspires Sarah to write another mystery of her own. A twist at the very end of "Swimming Pool" might also have one questioning how much of what we saw was actually real. 

It may be because "Swimming Pool" is French, but it wears its sexuality on its sleeve. There's no shame to Julie's one-night stands, and she is happy to flaunt them. Rather than falling into prudishness, Sarah, a Brit, merely seems jealous of Julie's overwhelming openness. Rampling gives a great, subtle performance, and plays off of the feisty Sagnier very well. 

Sagnier is a favorite of Ozon's, having appeared in four of his movies, most recently in 2024's "When Fall is Coming," an overlooked thriller with a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Ozon, meanwhile, remains prolific, having made over two dozen movies of all genres in his native France.

It's difficult to talk about David Fincher's 2014 film "Gone Girl" without giving away one or two of its major plot twists, so if you wish to see it with fresh eyes, skip over this section. If you wish to know all about the twists in the movie, we have explained the ending in detail. Either way, it's always a good time to watch or rewatch "Gone Girl," because it's amazing. 

Based on the novel by Gillian Flynn, "Gone Girl" begins with deadbeat writing teacher Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) coming home to find that his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) has gone missing. It's their fifth anniversary. The disappearance attracts a lot of media attention, as Amy was the inspiration for her parents' successful line of children's books. The media attention allows the public (and the audience) to notice that Nick is weirdly indifferent to Amy's disappearance. A police investigation reveals that Nick and Amy weren't enjoying the best marriage, and that Nick was having an affair. And what are we to make of Amy's hidden diary, discovered by the cops, that details a long series of fears and threats experienced while living with Nick? 

The back half of "Gone Girl" shifts the narrative to ... well, you may know where the story goes, but I shan't reveal it here. Needless to say, Amy had a lot more going on — and a lot more planned — than initially suspected. 

"Gone Girl" is one of the best "good for her" revenge thrillers of its vintage. It's stuffed with righteous indignation, and Pike, seen in many flashbacks, gives a great, wicked, villainous performance that makes us love her. It's a game of cat-and-mouse where the cat has set extra traps. 

Paul Feig's 2018 film "A Simple Favor" completely blindsided audiences. Feig had just come off of his loosey-goosey, tremendously unfunny iteration of "Ghostbusters," and little was expected of him. "A Simple Favor," however, proved that he is incredibly adept at sexy potboilers full of lies, betrayals, double-crosses, femmes fatale, and a little potential incest for good measure. 

The central femme fatale in "A Simple Favor" is Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), a seductive mid-afternoon martini-drinking "mean girl" type who befriends Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), a gentle mommy-blogger whose son attends the same school as Emily's son. Their two sons become fast friends, allowing the women to spend time together, get to talking ... and get to confessing. Emily confesses that her husband (Henry Golding) may not be as successful as he lets on, and Stephanie confesses that she once, uh, well, something involving her potential half-brother. 

The simple favor of the title is when Emily asks Stephanie to look after her son for a few days while she goes on a trip. The trip lasts way longer than expected, and Emily turns up missing. It's easy to predict, however, that Emily will re-enter this story eventually, although I refuse to say how or when. Needless to say, "A Simple Favor" is tight as a drum, sexy where it needs to be, and it luxuriates in wealth to a pornographic degree. A martini is rested on a gravestone. Those are the kinds of delicious pulp images we're dealing with. 

There were some rumors that "A Simple Favor" was based on a true story, but as we've previously explained, those rumors are not true. Paul Feig made a sequel, "Another Simple Favor" in 2025, although it wasn't nearly as good.