8 Spicy Thrillers to Watch If You Loved ‘Verity’

Michael Showalter’s 2026 adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel drops struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) into a job she can’t afford to refuse: finish a blockbuster series for Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), a bestselling author of villain-narrated thrillers who has been left unable to speak or move after a car crash. The crash is being hidden from the public. So is the fact that Verity and her husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), just lost their daughter in a canoeing accident.

Lowen moves into the lakeside house to dig through the notes, and the assignment stops being professional almost immediately. She finds a manuscript that reads like a confession — a wife who resented her children, and a drowning that may not have been an accident — and she starts wanting the life, the child, and the husband attached to it. The lust is part of the suspense. So is the question of whether the woman upstairs is a victim, a monster, or a writer who got too good. By the time the movie shows you its hand, Lowen is no longer the innocent hired to clean up someone else’s draft.

That’s the specific itch: erotic, paranoid, and mean about ambition. A woman in another woman’s house, a marriage already full of secrets, desire that doubles as a career move, and a twist that makes you rewind who you believed. If that’s what worked for you, these are the spicy thrillers with the same dark, twisty wiring — sex used as leverage, narrators you shouldn’t trust, and an ending that refuses to let anyone stay clean.

Here are movies to watch if you want more plots like ‘Verity’.

A dark-haired man in a black turtleneck nuzzles the neck of a blonde woman in a beige sweater who stares forward with a wary expression. — A man leans in close to a blonde woman’s neck in a charged, intimate moment — one of many in Paul Verhoeven’s erotic neo-noir. Credit: Basic Instinct (1992).

Basic Instinct (1992). A San Francisco detective investigates the ice-pick murder of a rock star and immediately locks onto Catherine Tramell, a novelist whose last book describes the crime in detail. Michael Douglas plays the cop who knows he should stay away from her and doesn’t. Sharon Stone’s interrogation scene is the whole movie in miniature: she is the suspect, the author, and the person controlling the room. It belongs here because Verity is built on the same dare. A woman who writes villains may be confessing, and the person reading her can’t tell the draft from the alibi.

Two women seen through a doorway: a short-haired brunette smiling while a dark-haired woman behind her places hands on her neck near a mirror. — Reflected in a mirror, a smiling woman with a short crop stands close as another adjusts her collar, capturing the unsettling intimacy at the heart of this psychological thriller. Credit: Single White Female (1992).

Single White Female (1992). Allie advertises for a roommate and gets Hedy, a shy woman who slowly starts wearing her clothes, copying her hair, and edging into her life until the imitation turns violent. Bridget Fonda is the woman who thinks she is offering a spare room. Jennifer Jason Leigh is the woman who heard an invitation to become her. The sex is less central than in Verity, but the trespass is the same: one woman moves into another woman’s house and starts trying on her life, including the man.

Two women lean close together, both listening to a small cell phone held between them, expressions tense and alert. — Two women — one redheaded in a blue tank top, one with wet dark hair in a light top — huddle together listening intently to a phone, ratcheting up the tension. Credit: Wild Things (1998).

Wild Things (1998). A guidance counselor in a Florida swamp town is accused of assault by a student, then by a second girl from the other side of the tracks, and every new confession rewrites who was in on it. Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, and Matt Dillon run a scam that keeps changing hands. The plot is a stack of double-crosses, and the sex scenes are part of the con rather than a break from it. Like Verity, it refuses to let you settle on a victim. The manuscript, or the accusation, is only true until the next person gets a cut.

A red-haired woman applies lipstick at a gold-framed bathroom mirror while a young blonde woman in a black dress is visible in the reflection behind her. — Framed in a bathroom mirror, a red-haired woman applies lipstick in the foreground while a younger blonde woman looks on from the reflection behind her. Credit: Chloe (2009).

Chloe (2009). A Toronto wife suspects her husband is cheating and hires a young escort to flirt with him and report back. The reports get more explicit, the wife gets more involved than she meant to, and the test stops being about him. Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, and Amanda Seyfried play a triangle in which the hired woman knows more about the marriage than the people in it. It sits next to Verity because desire is the investigative tool. Lowen was hired to finish a book and ends up wanting the husband; Catherine was hired to confirm a betrayal and ends up inside it.

Photographed in cool, muted tones, a blonde woman with an elegant updo gazes sideways while a dark-haired man looms behind her, the scene suffused with quiet dread. Credit: Gone Girl (2014).

Gone Girl (2014). On their fifth anniversary, Amy Dunne disappears and her husband, Nick, becomes the prime suspect, helped along by a diary that makes him look exactly like the man the public wants him to be. Ben Affleck plays the husband who is guilty of plenty and not necessarily of this. Rosamund Pike plays a wife who understood the assignment better than he did. This is the closest cousin on the list. Verity’s hidden manuscript and Amy’s diary do the same job: a woman’s writing becomes the evidence, and believing it is the mistake.

A woman in a white lace dress sits in an ornate chair while a man in a gray suit and white gloves leans over her shoulder, holding a brush. — A woman in a white lace dress looks sidelong at the camera while a gloved man leans over her shoulder holding a calligraphy brush, the power dynamic loaded with menace. Credit: The Handmaiden (2016).

The Handmaiden (2016). In Japanese-occupied Korea, a con man plants a pickpocket as a maid in the house of a wealthy woman he plans to marry, commit, and rob. The maid and the lady fall into an affair that wrecks the plan, and the film tells the same events again from the other side. Park Chan-wook makes the sex lavish and the structure a trap. It belongs with Verity because both are about a woman brought into a rich house under false pretenses, a manuscript that isn’t what it seems, and a twist that asks you to reread every intimate scene as strategy.

Blonde woman leaning toward a shirtless man sitting against a bathtub in a dimly lit bathroom. — A blonde woman leans in close to a shirtless man slumped against a bathtub in a darkly lit bathroom — a tense, intimate moment from Sanctuary (2022).

Sanctuary (2022). A dominatrix arrives at a hotel suite for what her wealthy client thinks is their last session before he takes over the family company. She has other ideas about what he owes her, and the night becomes a negotiation in which the script, the power, and the money keep changing hands. Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott are almost the entire movie. It is talkier and more contained than Verity, but the engine is identical: an erotic arrangement that was supposed to stay professional, and a woman who refuses to let the man decide when it ends.

Young man in a tuxedo sitting outdoors in a chair, holding a drink, with a large manor house blurred in the background. — Dressed in a tuxedo and holding a cocktail glass, a young man sits contemplatively outside a grand country estate at dusk in Saltburn (2023).

Saltburn (2023). Oliver, a scholarship student at Oxford, is pulled into the orbit of a rich classmate and invited to the family estate for the summer. What looks like longing curdles into a campaign to possess the house, the name, and the people in it. Barry Keoghan plays the guest who will not leave. Jacob Elordi plays the host who mistakes obsession for devotion. The marriage plot is missing, but the rest of the Verity shape is there: an outsider in a beautiful house, desire used as a key, and a late reveal that the awkward one was writing the story the whole time.