A Simple Favor (2018)

Set in contemporary suburban Connecticut, A Simple Favor features Anna Kendrick as Stephanie Smothers, a widow and mommy vlogger who befriends the mother of her sons best friend, a glamorous PR director for a New York fashion company named Emily Nelson, played by Blake Lively. Despite being seemingly very different from each other the two become good friends, so Stephanie thinks nothing of picking up Emily's son from school when she calls saying she is delayed because of an emergency at work. Only it turns out that there is no work emergency, and Emily simply disappears. Stephanie sets out to figure out what became of her best friend, while at the same time becoming perhaps to close to the grieving husband. Early on in the film you get the sense that there is something off about each of these lead characters, and you get to spend the bulk of the film discovering just what that is. I found the movie fascinating and unusual, an off kilter 'cozy mystery', refreshingly different from the work we associate with its director Paul Feig, who is mainly known for his Melissa McCarthy comedies. I was very impressed with the originality of the piece, it is hard to find a film to liken this to, the closet I can come up with is that it's kind of like Gone Girl, but with a dry sense of humor. This will almost certainly be on my top 10 list at the end of the year. ****