Summary
This article contains major spoilers for A Simple FavorA Simple Favormaking one crucial change to the fate of Faith from the original book makes Emily’s villain twist even more disturbing. Thepopular Netflix crime thrilleroriginally released in 2018 and achieved critical and commercial success, leading to a confirmed sequel as well. Based on a 2017 novel by Darcey Bell,A Simple Favor’s castfeatures Anna Kendrick as Stephanie and Blake Lively as Emily, two mothers who become close friends, only for Emily to mysteriously vanish.The film is filled with several campy plot twists and shocking revelations, most importantly Emily’s turn as a villain.
Given how the film ends,Blake Lively’s return inA Simple Favor 2sets up even more ridiculous plot twists. However, it’s also worth dissecting her character’s turn as a villain and what that final twist could mean for the sequel. As a book-to-movie adaptation,A Simple Favormakes many big changesto the 2017 book.The most significant of these changes is what it does to Emily’s character to make it even more diabolical and irredeemable than the book,leading to further questions about her return in the sequel.
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Emily Doesn’t Directly Kill Faith In A Simple Favor’s Book
She Just Lets Her Drown
In Darcey Bell’s original 2017 novel, Emily doesn’t directly kill her twin sister, Faith. Instead, Emily merely allows Faith to drown and doesn’t save her. While one could argue that this is just a technicality and Emily’s intention remained the same in both cases,the key difference lies in what Emily exercises agency to do.A Simple Favormovie makes Emily a bigger villain by making her go out of her way to drown Faith and kill her, rather than allowing Faith to die through willful inaction.
Oddly enough, though,Bell’s book also considers Emily’s actions to be unforgivable, while the movie tries to justify Emily’s actionsby suggesting that she had no other choice but to kill Faith. More broadly,A Simple Favormovie portrays Emily and Hope’s backstory quite differently from the novel, wherein they never set their childhood home on fire to kill their father, and their real names are Emily and Evelyn Nelson, not Hope and Faith McLanden. The movie thus embellishes the narrative a fair bit, which is standard practice forbook-to-movie adaptations.
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A Simple Favor’s Changes To Emily’s Backstory Make Her Villain Twist Way Less Redeemable
The movie character also faces punishment for her crimes
This key change in Emily’s backstory makes her a far more reprehensible and twisted character in the movie than in the book.ASimple Favormovie makes Blake Lively’s characterinto more of a psychotic killer, which the actor embodies through scary smirks and a glint in her eyes. This decision further ties into theending ofA Simple Favormovie, which is far less ambiguous and open-ended than the book. While Emily seems to get away with everything in the novel, the movie has her shooting Sean, confessing to murder, getting hit by a car, and getting arrested.
This ending not only makes the character much more deranged and diabolical, but also gives her an arc that a villain deserves. Going to prison is a form of narrative closure that holds a villain accountable for their actions.A Simple Favorthus ends with Emily playing basketball in prison, where she has been sentenced to 20 years. The movie could not be more ambivalent about Emily’s fate because it made her villain twist much less redeemable than the book.
A Simple Favor
Cast
Based on the novel by Darcey Bell, A Simple Favor stars Anna Kendrick as Stephanie, a widowed mother and vlogger who becomes friends with the wealthy mother of one of her son’s classmates, a woman named Emily. When Emily suddenly and inexplicably disappears, Stephaine begins to search for her and in doing so uncovers a series of dark secrets about Emily’s past. Blake Lively and Henry Golding also star.
