A Blake Lively Thriller Is Making Its Way To Netflix's Number One Spot

Are we on the verge of a Livelaissance? Four years after her last live-action movie role, Blake Lively is returning to the big screen this year with "It Ends With Us." The film adaptation of Colleen Hoover's best-selling toxic relationship novel made waves this past week with the arrival of its trailer, which even came fitted with an appropriately bleary-eyed tune by Lively's buddy Taylor Swift. It's also a reminder of just how well Livelites (which is what I'm calling Lively fans until I come up with a better name) were eating in the 2010s.

We're talking about a decade in which the "Gossip Girl" and "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" alum was in a marijuana-growing throuple in "Savages," played a woman who stopped aging at 29 and dated a young Harrison Ford in "The Age of Adaline," and killed a great white shark with her bare hands in "The Shallows" (only a slight exaggeration). Still, none of that compares to her turn as a chaotic bisexual fashionista who sweeps Anna Kendrick's unsuspecting suburbanite vlogger off her feet in 2018's "A Simple Favor."

Directed by Paul Feig, "A Simple Favor" came out at the height of "Gone Girl" fever in Hollywood. However, for as much as Darcey Bell's original 2017 novel drew comparisons to Gillian Flynn's twisted mystery-thriller upon its release, Feig's movie is less interested in the pointed satire of Flynn's book and David Fincher's movie adaptation. Instead, in indulges in pulpy airport fiction thrills, even as it playfully subverts them by having Lively's femme fatale befriend Kendrick's single mom before vanishing out of the blue, leaving her pal to undergo a wild goose chase and unearth the seedy secrets of her past.

Now, with Lively making headlines for "It Ends With Us," she's also climbing the Netflix charts with "A Simple Favor."

No sooner did "A Simple Favor" hit Netflix on May 19, 2024, than it rocketed its way into the streamer's Top 10. According to FlixPatrol, which tracks streaming data for multiple platforms worldwide, the film landed in the number two spot on Netflix in the U.S. as soon as it dropped and may well reach #1 by the time I've finished writing this. As always, you should take Netflix's viewership numbers for the flimsy metrics that they are. Still, if Amazon needed any reassurance that it made the right call green-lighting a sequel (which has Feig, Kendrick, and Lively returning along with writer Jessica Sharzer), then it just got some.

"A Simple Favor" itself has got it all: Blake Lively adorned in debonair suits, Anna Kendrick channeling her pent-up energy into playing Citizen Detective, and a delectably self-aware story ripe with dark family secrets, treachery, steamy trysts, martini-sipping, and gossipy elementary school parents who you just know are going to get all up and involved in your private business. The only caveat I have is that Paul Feig could stand to improve his direction. He's come a long way from his point-and-click approach on the otherwise great "Bridesmaids," yet he still leaves something wanting. A filmmaker with more gusto might've really leaned into the sleaze of "A Simple Favor," all while serving up the broad laughs that Feig excels at delivering. Here's hoping he turns up the juice and emulates other filmmakers in really letting his freak flag fly with the sequel.

In the meantime, you can pour yourself a martini of your own, chillax on the couch (or your preferred piece of furniture), and whittle away a couple of hours in the afternoon by streaming "A Simple Favor" on Netflix.