Anyone who watched the first Simple Favor movie shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the sequel, Another Simple Favor—which began streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday—comes with a splash of incest. After all, one of the many twists in the 2018 dark comedy thriller (spoiler alert!) was that Anna Kendrick’s character, Stephanie, slept with her brother, and possibly had a child with him. That led to Blake Lively exclaiming one of the film’s most memorable lines: “Brotherf–ker!”
Obviously, Another Simple Favor had to live up to that dark, scandalous reveal, and then some. Directed by Paul Feig, with a script written by Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis, this sequel picks up seven years after the events of the first movie. Emily is fresh out of prison (some murder, some attempted murder, no biggie) and newly engaged to an Italian dreamboat. She’s planned an extravagant wedding on the isle of Capri, and she wants Stephanie as her maid of honor. Stephanie goes along, in part to boost her follower count, and in part because Emily threatens to sue her. Just girlfriend stuff!
Warning: Major spoilers for Another Simple Favor ahead. Seriously, stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled.
Let’s get this out in the open: Blake Lively has sex with herself in Another Simple Favor, and yes, it’s wild.
After both Emily’s ex-husband Sean (Henry Golding) and her new husband Dante (Michele Morrone) are mysteriously murdered, Stephanie dusts off her detecting skills. She uncovers that Emily’s supposed still-born triplet, Charity, is still alive. We learned in the first movie that Emily’s real name is Hope, and that she was a triplet, but that one sister died in childbirth. (The second sister, Faith, was killed by Emily.) But it turns out, Charity isn’t dead. She was stolen by Emily’s Aunt Linda, raised in complete isolation, and was driven insane out of loneliness and abuse.
All this brings us to the incest scene—or should I say, twincest scene—in Another Simple Favor. Charity (also played by Lively) shows up at Emily’s hotel room, surprising her with her existence. With an armful of creepy dolls and a dreamy, childlike sort of insanity, Charity promises Emily she will “fix everything” so that the two of them can be together forever. Before Emily can react, Charity injects her with a drug. Then Charity lies Emily’s immobile body down on the bed, arranging her sister’s limp arms around her in an embrace.
In Emily’s unwilling arms, Charity sweetly confesses to murdering Sean, and reveals her plan to kill Dante.
“I’m not your sister, I’m you. And you’re me. And we’re one,” Charity croons to her twin, stroking her hair. “We don’t need Dante or Sean or Stephanie. We don’t need a woman or a man, we just need each other.”
Then, Charity begins to walk her fingers down Emily’s torso, as she says, in a breathy voice, “I’m only ever going to make you feel good. So good. So good because it makes me feel so good. Do you want to see what I mean? Blink if that’s OK.”
The camera pulls back, so we don’t see if Emily actually does blink or not. All we know is that Charity says, “Yay! OK!” and then reaches her hand… down there.
Maybe Emily did blink, maybe she didn’t. But it’s clear from her expression that this is, without question, a violation. But Charity keeps going. Emily, rendered motionless from the drugs, can only move her eyes.
“We’re gonna love this,” Charity promises. “We can feel so good at the same time.”
Then she flips herself atop her sister, and promises they will have “this” forever. She seals that promise with a kiss.
Yep! That really just happened, and it’s absolutely wild. The scene never gets more explicit than that kiss, but the implication is all too clear: Charity had sex with drugged-out twin sister.
The movie walks a delicate line with this one. On the one hand, this is sexual assault, which feels quite a few shades darker than the movie’s darkly comedic tone. On top of that, the abuser, Charity, is clearly the product of a lifetime of abuse. It’s much harder to play this subject off as part of the heightened, delicious fun. Much easier to do that with murder!
That said, I think Another Simple Favor does pull it off. This scene is relayed via a flashback, from Emily to Stephanie. Stephanie tactfully asks Emily if she’s OK, which helps soften the blow. At least the movie took the time to acknowledge just how dark that scene was, before getting back to the fun stuff.
And, of course, Stephanie couldn’t resist hitting Emily with a line of dialogue that makes this whole thing feel inevitable and scandalous in the best way: “Sisterf–ker!”
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