However far fetched Drop proves to be with its wild, pulling-the-wool-over-our-eyes premise, director Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) and screenwriters Jillian Jacobs (Fantasy Island) and Chris Roach (Non-Stop) maintain a sense of unpredictable fun across the film’s tight 95 minutes as it presents a cat-and-mouse thriller ripe for the digital age.
After opening with a tense sequence that sets up Drop‘s leading lady, Violet (Meghann Fahy), as a survivor of domestic abuse – something that proves valuable to setting her up as a figure of tenacity – we settle into the film’s main narrative around her first date since the death of her husband. She and her young son, Toby (Jacob Robinson), are practically attached at the hip, and she’s experiencing a little anxiety around both leaving him for the night – even though he’ll be in the care of Violet’s sister, Jen (Violett Beane) – and meeting Henry (Brandon Sklenar), her date.
Violet goes through the expected stages of nervousness and considers cancelling. Jen points out that the supremely handsome Henry has been patiently waiting for this date for months, and even Toby reassures her that, “It’s just a date.” Not being able to argue that, she dolls up and heads to the upscale restaurant Palate, an all-too-trendy establishment that adorns the top of a Chicago skyscraper; the height at which the restaurant is situated will prove a particular plot point towards the film’s ever-growing tense finale.
Trying to calm her nerves ahead of meeting freelance photographer Henry, Violet heads to the bar for a drink, and it’s here where we meet a slew of seeming inconsequential characters – Richard (Reed Diamond), another patron calming nerves on his first date, Cara (Gabrielle Ryan Spring), the personable bartender, and sassy waiter Matt (Jeffrey Self) – who start to weave in and out of Violet and Henry’s date in manners that may or may not be of importance.
Violet’s nerves are barely calmed once she meets Henry, however, as she starts receiving vaguely threatening memes on her phone via didiDROP, a faux in-movie app that’s similar to Apple’s AirDrop. She wants to believe they’re harmless, and Henry tries to put her at ease by gaging that to send her something like that, the person needs to be within 50 feet of her. Depending how you look at it, it’s comforting to know that whoever is sending these memes is in the public vicinity, but someone who clearly wants to cause harm being so close doesn’t make the situation remotely better.
That harm formulates when a masked assailant positions himself inside Violet’s home and taps into her home security system, threatening the lives of both Toby and Jen, informing Violet that in order for her family to survive the night she must follow a set of strict rules around not informing her date of the situation, not calling the police or alerting nearby patrons, and, most crucially, the night only ends with her killing her date.
Whilst it all seems straightforward enough for Violet to go ahead with such a plan in theory – she won’t let anyone harm her family and she barely knows Henry to have formulated strong feelings – because Jacobs and Roach have written quite a clever script, and Landon knows how to execute believable tension with the right amount of humour, Drop moves beyond expected logic and amplifies the entertainment factor in watching Violet navigate her situation without alerting Henry to what’s really going on.
With the first date awkwardness already being built in, it’s not out of the realms of possibility for Violet to be acting a little left of centre, adding a layer of credibility to her presence on the date. But because it’s also evident that Violet and Henry actually like each other – no doubt off their characters’ months-long texting – we completely believe why, even in the face of her unpredictable behaviour, he wants to keep the date going. And, perhaps most importantly, Fahy is such a presence, she convincingly sells her plight the entire way through.
As Violet and Henry both figure out what to do – her with the killer task at hand, he with trying to manoeuvre her erratic behaviour (it also should be noted that the film also succeeds off Sklenar’s performance too) – Drop escalates in tension as much as its plausibility is questioned. Films of this ilk aren’t made to be anything other than escapism thrills though (think Wes Craven’s 2005 air-thriller Red Eye, but set in a restaurant and you’ll have an idea of its mentality), and as absurd as it becomes, everyone on hand is committed to the cause of executing entertainment. And, in that regard, Drop is an absolute winner.
With the big “Who?” and “Why?” behind the proceedings not easily telegraphed, Drop manages to be a genuine surprise of a thriller at a time when audiences are becoming too savvy to genre play. It’s on-hand adrenaline is relentless and the film’s female survivor aspect helps the film equalise its date movie mentality.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Drop is screening in Australian theatres from April 17th, 2025.
