This piece includes spoilers for “Another Simple Favor.”

Nothing about “Another Simple Favor,” the sequel in the unfortunate and unnecessary “A Simple Favor” franchise, makes sense. But, to be fair, the 2018 film didn’t have that much going for it either. The main draw for the original movie, which is based on Darcey Bell’s novel of the same name, is the unexpected pairing of Blake Lively (and her striking wardrobe) and Anna Kendrick.

To refresh your memory — or save you two hours of your life if you haven’t watched it — Lively and Kendrick are frenemies brought together by their 6-year-old sons in “A Simple Favor.” Kendrick plays Stephanie Smothers, the suburban mom who makes every other mom in the class look bad with her homemade food and extra volunteer shifts. Between her over-the-top parenting, hypervigilance and mommy vlog, she’s also the mom the other parents make fun of.

This makes it especially surprising when she becomes friends with Lively’s character, Emily Nelson, who works a high-profile PR job in the city and makes martinis at 2 p.m. while wearing outfits that are supposed to be glamorous. Emily’s outfits — the costumes were once again designed by Renee Erlich Kalfus — would be perfect for a grown-up and edgy Serena van der Woodson (Lively’s character in “Gossip Girl”), but they are completely impractical for supervising a playdate.

Despite their many obvious differences, the friendship seems to work because they both have dark pasts that they share with each other between sips of martinis while their boys play. Stephanie’s secret involves sleeping with her half-brother after her dad’s funeral, which earns her the moniker “brotherfucker” (it’s as cringe as it sounds) and is meant to show that despite her beatific appearance, engaging in incest makes her a little twisty, too. (She can be a fun mom!) But not nearly as twisted as Emily, whom Stephanie comes to realize she knows absolutely nothing about.

The friendship takes a dark turn when Emily asks Stephanie to do her “a simple favor” and pick her kid up from school and watch him, but Emily never returns to pick him up. This is when Stephanie, convinced that something horrible has happened to Emily, goes on a mission to discover the truth. Using her vlog’s audience and natural sleuthing skills, she helps the police find what they believe to be Emily’s body. This is when Stephanie shows off her rebellious side and channels her inner single white female to sleep with Sean (Henry Golding), Emily’s husband, mother her son, Nicky (Ian Ho), and take over Emily’s impressive closet.

Eventually, Stephanie discovers that Emily was a triplet, and one sister died during birth (supposedly) and another was an addict trying to blackmail her. Logically, Emily murders the long-lost twin as part of her scheme to defraud her life insurance company, which, many more plot twists later, leads Stephanie’s vlog to go viral, Emily to be incarcerated for murdering her sister, and Sean to move away with Nicky.

“Another Simple Favor” picks up seven years after these events. Like the first movie, it begins in media res with a vlog entry. On “A Pinch of Murder,” a “one-stop shop for hot home tips and cold case flips,” Stephanie updates viewers on the big problem she’s experiencing. Everyone thinks she killed Emily’s new husband.

Then, paralleling the first movie, Stephanie backtracks to describe to her skyrocketing number of viewers exactly how she found herself in such a complicated situation. The gist is that Stephanie wrote a book about her relationship with Emily, who is supposed to be in jail, but shows up at her book reading. It turns out that Emily has gotten out on appeal and is engaged to be married to a ridiculously wealthy Italian man whose family is full of mobsters. She wants Stephanie to be her maid of honor and threatens her into agreeing.

This is how Stephanie finds herself on the beautiful island of Capri with Sean and Nicky (who are also blackmailed) to celebrate the nuptials of Emily and new character Dante Versano (Michele Morrone). As they stand in front of the jagged peaks overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, it seems clear that Emily is calling all of the shots. Meanwhile, Stephanie is convinced that Emily only brought her there to punish or kill her as payback for what happened in the first movie.

From Lively’s first line in “Another Simple Favor” — “Boo” — her acting is grating. She saunters into the bookstore in bejeweled heels with a chain belt jangling in slow motion and steps into her role as caricature. Lively leans into this, emphasizing how nonsensically transgressive and dangerous Emily is supposed to be. Like with the first movie, Kendrick’s faux positivity and comedic awkwardness steal each scene. She is the thread that holds each movie together, giving audiences someone to root for despite her weird relationship with Emily.

Together, the pair creates more confusion than chemistry. They feel like neither friends nor enemies. Instead, it is as if Emily and Stephanie are characters being forced to participate in their lives despite their total disinterest. For those who haven’t followed the press tour, the strained dynamic between Lively and Kendrick gives off this same vibe.

This aimlessness also plagues the plot. Even though there are many twists, they are predictable and bland despite the movie trying very hard to make them feel the opposite. One such example is when Sean is murdered in the shower while trying and failing to masturbate. This moment feels pedestrian because it’s working too hard to be subversive while giving viewers too little emotion to connect. Instead of creating tension, Sean’s quick death has minimal impact on the movie and makes it clear that the franchise has lost its plot (if it even had one to begin with). His character’s chemistry with Stephanie was also one of the highlights of the first movie, and it’s disappointing that his character becomes so depressed and dies so quickly in the second movie.

There are also some nonsensical side subplots that bog down the story: the appearance of an FBI agent, a beard to hide a star-crossed relationship between two men from warring mob families, a kidnapping by one of those mobs, and a rescue from a cleaning lady at the hotel. (The cleaning cart moment is only out of place in this context because it is actually funny.)

Writer Jessica Sharzer also uses the same major twist to complicate and resolve the story she uses in the first film. The big reveal in “A Simple Favor” is the stereotypical long-lost twin. In the sequel, it’s the assumed-to-be-dead triplet, Charity. Her appearance is inevitable, not shocking. Neither is the fact that she is being controlled by Emily’s estranged Aunt Linda (Allison Janney).

What is shocking is the horrible way the sequel also incorporates incest. Charity drugs Emily and sexually assaults her, and, at the end Stephanie jokes about it and calls Emily a “sisterfucker.” The Lively-on-top-of-Lively scene is horrific to watch, and the way it is joked about is appalling, as is how Emily eventually uses her sister’s attraction to her to resolve what becomes the biggest conflict.

The main problem is that Dante tears up his prenup after marrying Charity, whom he thinks is Emily. Then, Charity murders Dante, and Stephanie is blamed for it. Emily uses her sister’s devotion to convince her to take the blame for all of the murders that occur in Capri and the murders from the previous movie. After successfully skirting Aunt Linda’s plan, Nicky goes to live with Stephanie, and Emily is left in hiding. The two women reach some kind of questionable peace that feels too codependent and illogical, and makes their final shared phone call in the second-to-last scene cringeworthy.

However, all is not well in the end. Enter Dante’s mom, Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci). She meets Emily in front of the Trevi Fountain at night (an improbable setting because not a single tourist is in the background). Emily is in another absurd outfit that is supposed to be glamorous and sipping champagne from a real glass. (That isn’t even her drink of choice! She always drinks martinis.)

Of course, Portia threatens Emily and asks her to do “a simple favor.” I fear another unnecessary installment of the franchise is coming. Kendrick even teased it on “Good Morning America,” saying it might be called “A Simpler Favor.”

I sincerely hope not. While Kendrick is the bright spot of the movie, breathing life into a character that is flatly drawn, her performance isn’t enough to compensate for Lively’s stale, one-dimensional portrayal of Emily or the franchise’s predictable plot patterns.

The best thing the “A Simple Favor” franchise could do is end its run here with “Another Simple Favor.” Two movies were two more than we ever needed.

“Another Simple Favor” is streaming on Prime Video.