A
Simple Favor
Came
out; 2018
Time;
1 hour 57 minutes
Watched
on; Amazon
Rating;
R for sexual content and language throughout, some graphic nude
images, drug use and violence
IMDB
Rating; 6.8/10
Caution;
Spoiler Alert
Staring;
Anna
Kendrick as Stephanie Smothers
Ian
Ho as Nicky Nelson
Blake
Lively as Emily Nelson
Hendry
Golding as Sean Townsend
Joshua
Satine as Miles Smothers
Glenda
Barganza as Mrs. Kerry
Andrew
Rannells as Darren
Kelly
McCormack as Stacy
Aparna
Nancheria as Sona
Storyline;
Stephanie
is a single mother with a parenting vlog who befriends Emily, a
secretive upper-class woman who has a child at the same elementary
school. When Emily goes missing, Stephanie takes it upon herself to
investigate
Thoughts;
This
was such a good movie. It was the slow burn type so you have to
watch the entire thing.
Stephanie
Smothers (Anna Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) make
the best opposites attract type of friends. They keep you
guessing and wonder what the hell is going on!
Plot
Summary; CAUTION; Major Spoiler Alert
Mommy
blogger Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), a single mother in
Connecticut, makes a video for her mom vlog, "Hi Moms!"
Before she begins with her recipe, she updates viewers on an ongoing
case involving Stephanie's best friend, Emily Nelson (Blake Lively),
who has been missing for the last five days. Stephanie is overcome
with emotion before composing herself to give new viewers a recap on
what has happened.
Stephanie admits she has not known Emily
that long, and met her at their sons' kindergarten recently.
Stephanie is always volunteering and contributing to Miles' (Joshua
Satine) class, to the point where some other parents like Darren
(Andrew Rannells), Sona (Aparna Nancherla), and Stacy (Kelly
McCormack) think Stephanie is making them look bad. The other parents
discuss their jealousy over Emily, who works in New York City for a
major fashion brand as a public relations manager. After school,
Miles wants to have a playdate with his friend Nicky (Ian Ho),
Emily's son. Stephanie first meets the sophisticated Emily when she
goes to pick Nicky up, and, at the boys' pestering, Emily agrees to
the playdate and invites Stephanie to come over for
drinks.
Stephanie arrives at Emily's stylish home. She is
stunned to see a graphic nude painting of Emily hanging on a wall.
Emily is blunt and rather crass, even telling Stephanie to stop
apologizing. Stephanie explains that she is a widow after her husband
and brother were killed in a car accident. Emily's husband, English
professor and one-time author Sean Townsend (Henry Golding), arrives
home and meets Stephanie while he and Emily kiss passionately.
Stephanie says she has read Sean's book and enjoyed it. However, when
Sean isn't there, Emily notes that Sean hasn't written a thing since
the first book 10 years ago, and that they are close to
bankruptcy.
While taking the boys to the park, Stephanie snaps
a photo of Emily for the school's yearbook. Emily firmly orders
Stephanie to delete the photo, and does not explain why. Stephanie
meekly obliges. At Emily's house, the two have martinis and trade
secrets. Emily tells Stephanie of how she and her husband got into a
threesome with Sean's teaching assistant a few months earlier.
Stephanie then tells a secret of how, after her father passed away
when she was a high school senior, she met a son he had from another
relationship named Chris (Dustin Milligan). In her grief, Stephanie
turned to Chris, and the two wound up having sex, leading a shocked
Emily to call Stephanie a "brother fucker".
Emily
calls Stephanie and asks her for "a simple favor" to pick
up Nicky from school because she has to take care of some work
business, while Sean has gone to London to look after his injured
mother. Stephanie obliges, but she can't get in touch with Emily.
After two days, Emily hasn't come for Nicky. Stephanie calls Emily's
job and is told that Emily flew to Miami to handle something, which
she didn't mention to anyone, even Sean. Stephanie gets in touch with
Sean to inform him, and he isn't surprised that Emily has left Nicky
with her. He says that when Emily knows Nicky is with someone taking
care of him, she will disappear for a few days. He returns home the
next day for Nicky, and when Stephanie tells him that her assistant
is unable to get in touch with Emily either, they speak to the police
about Emily, who has been gone for three days. The police imply that
she has left on her own because of marital troubles and Sean later
tells Stephanie that Emily deleted his Facebook account once when he
posted a photo of her.
Stephanie takes it upon herself to find
out what happened to Emily. She goes to Emily's work in New York City
and meets her overbearing boss, designer Dennis Nylon (Rupert
Friend), who rudely dismisses Stephanie's concerns and insults her
outfit. Stephanie sneaks into Emily's office and finds a
black-and-white photocopy of an unflattering photo of Emily with
"Gotta have faith" written on it. Stephanie is spotted on
her way out of the office and Dennis threatens her, but Stephanie
remembers hearing Emily speaking brashly to Dennis, and Stephanie
hits back with some sass of her own to get Dennis to back off.
Stephanie then uses the photo of Emily to make missing fliers.
Detective Summervile (Bashir Salahuddin) later visits Sean to inform
him that Emily was not on any flights to Miami but that she rented a
car from LaGuardia Airport the day she disappeared.
Stephanie
wraps up her original video posted after Emily had been missing for
five days, updating her viewers with details about Emily's rental
car. After a few days of Emily being gone, Stephanie's viewership has
increased, and one of Stephanie's vlog viewers sends her a message
stating that she may have spotted Emily driving in Michigan.
Authorities go by a lake where the car was spotted, and sure enough,
they fish the car out of the lake, as well as Emily's body. Sean is
called in to identify the body, and he breaks down.
A funeral
is held for Emily. Nicky and Miles get into a fight when Miles says
that Emily is in heaven, and Nicky yells at Stephanie, claiming that
she's trying to be his new mom, and Nicky yells at his father that he
is a loser as his mother said. Sean reacts angrily but Stephanie ably
defuses the situation. After the reception, Stephanie and Sean
console each other, which leads to the two of them having
sex.
Stephanie speaks with Detective Summervile and is in
disbelief when told that Emily's autopsy showed that she not only had
severe liver damage from alcohol abuse, but heroin in her body and
track marks on her arms and between her toes from injecting heroin.
She informs him that the couple fought about money like most married
people do. Detective Summervile also tells her that Sean took out a
$4 million life insurance policy on Emily right before she died.
Stephanie insists they are looking in the wrong direction by
investigating Sean, and that Dennis Nylon is way more suspicious. The
detective explains that Nylon contacting them telling them that
Stephanie had more information than she was revealing.
Stephanie
goes by the college where Sean works and sees him getting very
friendly with his attractive young teaching assistant. At dinner,
Nicky insists he saw his mom that day at school, and when told by
Sean that he merely thinks he saw her, Nicky retorts that she spoke
to him and told him to say hi to Stephanie.
Growing
suspicious, she asks Sean about the life insurance, which Sean says
was Emily's idea after learning that Stephanie lives off her
husband's insurance, so they were thinking about Nicky in case
something happened to either of them. He also tells Stephanie a story
about the ring that was found on Emily's finger. It belonged to his
mother and was the only piece of jewelry she cared about, and
although Emily claimed she had given it to her and wanted Emily to
have it, Emily in fact stole it. While visiting his mother in London,
the ring disappeared, and on the plane ride back to New York, Emily
announced she had found it. A relieved Sean is shocked when Emily
reveals she has no intention of giving it back and actually stole it,
and that there was no point for his mother to take such a beautiful
ring to the grave. She tells him to choose her or his mother. They
would later go into the airplane bathroom where Nicky was conceived.
When Stephanie tells him she knows about his threesome, he tells her
that Emily was a pathological liar and that it never
happened.
Shortly after, Sean convinces Stephanie to move in.
After Stephanie empties Emily's clothes from her large walk-in
closet, she is startled to see all of Emily's items suddenly returned
to their same spots. Stephanie begins to believe that Emily is a
spirit who is worried about being replaced. While she is driving the
boys home from school, Nicky gives Stephanie an envelope that he says
is from Emily. Stephanie opens it and finds a picture of Stephanie
with her family and Chris, with "brother fucker" written on
it. Stephanie then receives a phone call from Emily, mocking her, and
tells her to kiss Sean 4 million times for her.
Stephanie
thinks back to telling Emily about the day her husband, Davis, and
brother, Chris, were killed. Davis confronted her on her close
relationship with Chris and his affection toward Miles, and demanding
to know whether Miles was his son or Chris's. She tells him he is
talking crazy but does not answer the question. The two men then
drive off in Davis' Camaro for a "man-to-man" talk, only to
be killed. When Stephanie tearfully recounts her guilt, she and Emily
end up kissing.
Stephanie continues to dig into Emily's
history. She takes the nude portrait of her, which she had said was
painted by a former lover, and sees from the signature that it was
painted by a woman. She tracks down the artist, Diana Hyland (Linda
Cardellini), who claims that she was once in a romantic relationship
with Emily, but her name was really Claudia. Diana was on the verge
of a burgeoning career and starting to sell her work before she fell
in love with her. She began painting nudes of exclusively and it
ruined her career. Diana says "Emily" was a con artist who
scammed her out of money after Diana paid off her student loans and
college debts, and then she disappeared completely. Diana then gives
Stephanie the one thing Emily left, which is a T-shirt for a Bible
camp called Squaw Lake in Michigan. She warns her not to investigate
Emily's past.
Stephanie visits the camp and gets old books
with pictures from past campers. In the book from 1996, she finds
many pictures of twins Hope and Faith McLanden. After contacting
numerous people with the name McLanden, Stephanie manages to find
Hope and Faith's mother, Margaret (Jean Smart). Stephanie disguises
herself as a cleaner and then sits down to ask Margaret about her
daughters. She describes the two of them as being trouble, especially
Faith. Stephanie shows Margaret the picture she found in Emily's
office and confirms that the woman in the photo is Faith. It turns
out that when Hope and Faith were 16, they burned down the east wing
of their home with their father inside, and the two vanished without
a trace.
Now that she's onto something, Stephanie makes a vlog
calling out to Emily, forcing her to reveal herself as being alive.
She "updates" her viewers about how, to get closure, she
went to Michigan to find out all about Emily's life, sharing photos
from the Bible camp. She says the photos helped her feel as close as
a twin to Emily, before closing with a message to Emily is, telling
her that she's "gotta have Faith" wherever she is. Emily
meets a shocked Sean at the restaurant they always go to on their
anniversary. Emily expresses her disdain that Sean had sex with
Stephanie in their home, and appears to threaten Sean with a gun,
only to pull the trigger and reveal the gun wasn't loaded.
Emily
meets Stephanie in the cemetery by her own grave. Emily tells
Stephanie her side of the story, although a flashback reveals what
Emily ISN'T saying. Emily, who is really Hope, and her twin sister,
Faith, burned the east wing of their house with their father inside
because he was abusive. She notes that she was actually a triplet,
but their sister Charity was stillborn. After the fire, they ran away
from home and planned to meet up elsewhere, but Faith never showed
up. After 16 years, Faith contacted Emily to meet up at the camp,
where Emily found that Faith has become a heroin addict. Faith tried
to blackmail Emily, and Emily drowned her in the lake and used her
body to be found so that Sean and Nicky can get the life insurance
money since they were broke. Back in the present, despite Emily
stating that Faith's death was a suicide, Stephanie knows it was
murder. Emily then accuses Stephanie of not being fully honest
regarding her relationship with Chris, implying that he is Miles's
real father. A flashback shows that Stephanie's husband Davis (Eric
Johnson) was also suspicious as well, and that he took Chris on the
car ride that ended their lives. Additionally, Emily plays a
recording of her conversation with Sean in the restaurant, where he
says that Stephanie meant nothing to him and that he thought of Emily
during sex.
Stephanie then brings in an insurance lawyer, who
tells Sean that since it was discovered that Emily had a twin, the
insurance company is hesitant to pay the full amount, especially
since it is a large amount of money.
Emily steals a wrench and
tosses it into the air so that it hits her in the eye. She walks into
a police station to make it look like Sean beat her and forced her to
fake her death, as part of a scheme to frame Sean for insurance
fraud. Sean is investigated and later taken into custody but released
on bail.
Stephanie
then plans with Sean to get Emily to confess to the murders of her
father and sister. Stephanie comes in with a gun and pretends to
shoot Sean, but Emily already knew of everything and cut the mics
that the police planted. She takes out her own gun and shoots Sean in
the shoulder for real while also confessing to the murders. Stephanie
then reveals that she has a hidden camera on her blouse, and that her
viewers have all seen Emily's confession. Emily attempts to escape as
Stephanie goes after her. Emily draws her gun on Stephanie, but she
gets slammed by a car driven by Darren. Moments later, the police
arrive to arrest Emily.
Six months later, Stephanie's vlog has
hit one million viewers. She continues to provide recipes and home
remedies, and is now investigating cold cases.
Ending text
states that Stephanie's vlog continues to bring in viewers, while she
has also started a detective agency and has helped the police solve
at least 30 cases. Sean has written another successful book and has
gotten a job working at another university, and he still lives with
Nicky. Emily was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but she has
adjusted to prison life nicely, as she is seen playing basketball
with her fellow inmates
