A Simple Favor, Paul Feig's 2018 criminal thriller, is streaming on Netflix, reminding viewers of another great mystery film. Based on the 2017 novel of the same name, A Simple Favor stars Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively as two moms who become close friends before Lively disappears.
A Simple Favor pays homage classic mystery crime thrillers and features campy twists, murder plots, and surprising disclosures from the first scene to the last.
After debuting on Netflix in May 2024, A Simple Favor has been in the Top 10 movies, showing a welcome return in viewership. A Simple Favor grossed $97.6 million against a $20 million budget in 2018, although it wasn't a huge smash.
A Simple Favor has been likened to Gone Girl, another book-to-film mystery thriller, since its 2018 release. A Simple Favor's comic edge parodies genre conventions and twists like David Fincher's Gone Girl. The 2014 film grossed $369.3 million and earned Saltburn's Rosamund Pike an Oscar nomination for her role as Amy Dunne (Box Office Mojo).
Gone Girl begins with Amy Dunne disappearing, with her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) being the prime suspect in her murder case and her diary entries filling in the gaps.
It's easy to see why A Simple Favor's twists were compared to Gone Girl. Both films begin with a mysterious wife disappearing, only to uncover that she staged it and implicated her husband in her “murder.”
While Gone Girl won prizes and genre impact, both films were well-received by critics and moviegoers. One of David Fincher's best films, Gone Girl has a “Certified Fresh” 87% Rotten Tomatoes score, his third-highest.
Despite having over 100,000 ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, Gone Girl has an 87% audience score, indicating general agreement from reviewers and fans.
Even with a similar premise, A Simple Favor has won over critics and fans with similar Rotten Tomatoes scores to the Ben Affleck film. Critics gave the film an 84% “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while viewers gave it 73%.
There were initial rumors of a Gone Girl sequel, but A Simple Favor 2 is currently in production. Blake Lively's character remarries in Europe in the sequel to the 2018 thriller, bringing back Emily, Stephanie, and Sean.