‘A Simple Favor,’ The Best Overlooked Film of 2018, is Now on Hulu and Amazon Prime

There are a lot of terrible things happening in the world right now, but there is also at least one decidedly good thing: A Simple Favor is now streaming on both Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.

If you missed this dark comedy gem when it was in theaters last fall, I am incredibly jealous of you, because it means you get to experience the delight of watching Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in a frothy murder mystery for the very first time. From Bridesmaids director Paul Feig and writer Jessica Sharzer, who adapted the Darcey Bell 2017 novel of the same name, A Simple Favor is a rare combination pure, unadulterated fun with precise, high-quality filmmaking. Unfortunately, that’s a combination that doesn’t get much love from award shows, so the film somewhat slipped through the cracks after a moderately-successful theatrical run. Now that A Simple Favor is a mere click away on Hulu and Prime, I sincerely hope it finds the second life it so deserves.

If you need to be sold on it, here’s a brief pitch: Feig is a master of the kind of unexpected casting that changes actors’ careers (see: Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids, Chris Hemsworth in Ghostbusters, Jason Statham in Spy) and he does it again to great success with Lively as Emily Nelson. Emily, as her husband Sean (played by Crazy Rich Asians‘s Henry Golding) says, is an enigma. As a high-powered PR director for a fashion company, she’s always impeccably dressed in some of the best on-screen suits I’ve seen in quite some time. (Suits that Lively has said were inspired by Feig himself.) Emily is nothing like the good-girl characters Lively is known for: She is blunt, foul-mouthed, and a lover of strong martinis.

After their sons become friends, Emily forges her own unlikely friendship with a timid single mother named Stephanie (Kendrick). Kendrick is the perfect counter to Emily’s brass confidence—dorky, quiet, mild-mannered. But Stephanie, a widow, has a darkness to her that Emily is all too thrilled to discover. Then, when Emily mysteriously vanishes after asking Stephanie to pick up her son from school, the real fun begins. What was Emily hiding? What does her husband know? And how far is Stephanie willing to go to find out?

You’ll have to stream the film for answers, and trust me, you won’t be disappointed. At the very least, you’ll get to see Blake Lively unceremoniously strip out of a suit, which is bound to brighten anyone’s day.

Watch A Simple Favor on Hulu