A simple favor is not so simple when watching your kid for a couple hours turns into a scheme that gets people killed, unearths deep secrets, and turns into dirty affairs. “A Simple Favor,” starring Anna Kendrick (Stephanie) and Blake Lively (Emily), follows the complex lives of two mothers whose paths cross when they meet at the school that their sons go to. 

This is a movie directed by Paul Feig and written by Jessica and Darcey Bell. This movie is about a wealthy woman, Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), who suddenly disappears. She is known to leave at days or weeks at a time so when she goes missing this time, no one really questions it, except Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), because she is left to take care of Nelson’s son.

This movie is a comedy, crime film, mystery film, thriller film, drama, and mystery. You can definitely see all of the genres come out during the movie. I would say that the genres that come out the most are drama and thriller. While following this movie, there are many secrets that come out. There is a lot of high suspense scenes that leave you wondering what will happen next.

The first part of the movie is very well written and the plot line is very good. Emily and Stephanie meet at the school that their children go to. Then Emily invites Stephanie to her house, here Stephanie finds out that she is very wealthy and that she is married to a famous author, Sean Townsend (Henry Golding). Emily and Stephanie then start drinking and start sharing secrets. When Emily finally gets Stephanie to admit her deepest secret she starts to taunt her and tease her about it. Little does Stephanie know, that’s not even close to the worst thing that will happen to her throughout the movie.

Suddenly, Emily disappears and leaves Stephanie with her son, Nicky played by Ian Ho. Stephanie then goes to further investigate. She finds a envelope on her desk with what looks like a picture of Emily on it, but really it’s not. She goes to further investigate and uncovers a lot of dark secrets that Emily has been hiding. This really shows you what will happen and does a lot of foreshadowing into how deep the movie will get. I liked that they did this because it was one of the ways to tell you how serious the movie will get.

The middle of the movie is when the show really starts to go downhill. There are so many things that happen and it gets hard to know what’s actually happening. Also, you think it’s the end of the movie and then there is another plot twist, which makes it even more confusing. 

When a identical body to Emily is found floating in the water, Stephanie helps Sean a lot during the hard times of his wife’s death. This part was when the movie really started getting into the mystery and action. Stephanie discovers that Emily had a twin. Emily’s twin came out of prison and decided to blackmail her in exchange for Emily’s son’s life. This leads Emily to kill her sister and fake her own death.

Stephanie and Sean get closer and eventually this leads to a romantic relationship. This relationship really adds a lot of drama to the movie and provides a lot to the story line. This makes Emily jealous and so she comes back to tell them that she is still alive and that this was all a big scheme, to get Emily’s life insurance money. Emily comes back and decides to blackmail Sean to help her with the plan, or else she will say that it was all his idea and she had nothing to do with it.

In the end, Stephanie and Sean team up with the cops to take Emily down. But Emily is to smart for that and cuts all of the wires. This part was very surprising and added a lot to the story line. This then makes Stephanie go crazy and shoot Sean. This was very surprising because of the bond that they had created over the course of the movie.  Then it turns out it wasn’t actually a real bullet. Stephanie then reveals her hidden camera on her shirt that is live streaming to all of the people who follow her mom blogs. This then makes Emily pull a actual gun on Sean and Stephanie. Sean gets shot, but doesn’t die. The ending wasn’t as good as the beginning because in my opinion, there was way to much stuff happening and it gets kind of hard to follow.

I do not think that this was a very good movie because there was just so much stuff that happened. It started really strong and had a good plot line. Then, it started getting crazy and you couldn’t really tell what was happening. It wasn’t a terrible movie. There were some parts that were really good and thrilling. These parts would keep you on the edge of your seat and make you want more. Overall it wasn’t a great movie.