Soon, stars Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick will reunite in the comedy thriller Another Simple Favor. But what about that first favor — the one that started it all? In A Simple Favor, when self-conscious vlogger Stephanie befriends the intimidatingly powerful Emily at her son’s school, she’s elated — even if their relationship mostly revolves around Stephanie doing favors for Emily. But when Emily goes missing, Stephanie makes it her mission to find out what happened to her Gone Girl’d pal … and digs up some deep dark secrets in the process. The 2018 film, from Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, stars Lively, Kendrick, and Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding.
Blake Lively in A Simple Favor
Stephanie (Kendrick) is a power PTA mom and vlogger who never passes up a chance to volunteer at Warfield Elementary, where her son, Miles (Joshua Satine), goes to school. She’s also a widower who’s desperate for friends. So when she meets the elusive Emily (Lively), the mom of Miles’ friend Nicky (Ian Ho), she’s intrigued. Emily is everything Stephanie isn’t — unapologetic, super confident, always dressed to the nines … and a little bit scary. The two couldn’t be more different, but forge a friendship anyway.
Or at least, Stephanie thinks they’re friends. She often picks up Emily’s son, Nicky, from school whenever Emily can’t, and the moms even hang out for drinks. But the other parents aren’t convinced — Emily wants a nanny, not a friend. Then one day, after asking Stephanie for yet another favor, Emily goes missing. It’s as if she just … disappeared. So her self-proclaimed bestie starts her own investigation. As she tries to find out what happened, Stephanie uncovers shocking details about her so-called friend’s past.
Anna Kendrick in A Simple Favor
No. The film is completely fictional.
Yes. It’s based on the novel of the same name by author Darcey Bell.
Henry Golding and Anna Kendrick in A Simple Favor
It takes place in the fictional New York City suburb of Warfield, Connecticut.
So where did Emily run off to, and why? Emily tells Stephanie she’s gone to Miami, which is a lie. The truth is, she went to Michigan to see her long-lost twin, Hope (also played by Lively), who she hasn’t had contact with since the two were teens. They last saw each other after burning down a wing of their childhood home in order to kill their abusive father, Bruce. Both sisters then went their separate ways, but instead of reuniting weeks later as planned, Hope disappeared for good.
Emily meets Hope at the summer camp they grew up going to. When Emily arrives, Hope — who has a heroin addiction and is in need of money — demands her sister give her a million dollars, otherwise she’ll tell the police what happened to their father. To silence Hope, Emily drowns her in the nearby lake, then puts her own wedding ring on her sister’s finger. This way, it’ll look like Emily died — not Hope — which means her husband, Sean (Golding), can cash in on Emily’s $4 million life insurance policy. Emily plans to snatch up every dime and leave the country.
Within a few weeks of Emily’s disappearance, police find the body, which convinces both Sean and Stephanie that Emily really is dead. But after the kids seemingly spot Emily around town, Stephanie starts digging into the case and slowly but surely reveals all of Emily’s lies — for example, that her real name is Faith and she has a secret sister not even Sean knows about.
Eventually, Sean and Stephanie (who started dating after Emily’s supposed death) get so angry about Emily’s deception that they end up working with the police. So when Emily shows up at her old house like she’s never left, Stephanie pulls a gun on her and Sean, shooting Sean and forcing Emily to confess to her sister’s murder. The shot was fake — part of the police sting — but then Emily pulls out a real gun and shoots Sean. Bad luck for Emily: Stephanie’s been live streaming the whole shoot-out to her thousands of viewers. Emily runs out of the house, with Stephanie close behind. Emily heads into the street just as a parent they know from school, Darren (Rannells), hits her with his car. She’s not dead, but incapacitated, and the police take her into custody.
Before the credits roll, we get a few blurbs about what the main characters are up to: Stephanie’s a famous vlogger who runs her own cold case agency and is dating someone new; Sean — who survives the gunshot wound — finally wrote another book and now heads the UC Berkeley literature department; and Emily is serving 20 years in prison for the murders of her father and sister and the attempted murder of her husband.
