One wishes Showalter and his cast would have leaned harder toward the twisty hysteria of something like A Simple Favor (2018) instead of trying to imagine what a Hitchcock movie would be like with less tension and more Chobani product placement.

Verity lopes around unevenly instead of building to a fever pitch.

There is an intensely stupid twist near the end that makes no narrative sense and is followed by a final reel rug-pull so inconceivably lazy that it inevitably symbolises two fingers casually raised in the direction of the audience.

There's a difference between a bad film and a bad time, and Verity is an excellent bad time.