'Drop' Takes Audiences on An Anxiety-Driven Date with Terror [Review]

First dates can be hell. I’ve been with my wife for over a decade now—how she isn’t sick of me yet, I’ll never know—but I haven’t forgotten the nerves that come with putting yourself out there. The awkward conversation. The sweaty palms. The stress in your gut when you know it isn’t going well. With Drop, director Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) packs all that tension into a tightly wound thriller that takes audiences out for a nerve-wracking night on the town pushed to the extreme.

Widowed mother Violet (Meghann Fahy) is still recovering from the trauma of her abusive ex-husband. Her son, Toby (Jacob Robinson) is her entire world. So, when she decides to leave him with her spunky sister, Jen (Violett Beane) and go on a date with a guy she’s been messaging for a few months, it’s a big deal. Henry (Brandon Sklenar) turns out to be quite the charmer, and the swanky restaurant he’s booked a table at has a stunning view looking down on the city. It should be the date of Violet’s dreams. That is, until she starts receiving strange drops on her phone, messages from an unknown source within fifty feet of her. The messenger reveals a gunman has kidnapped her family and is holding them hostage until Violet does as she asks and murders Henry. Tell anyone, and her family dies. If Henry leaves, her family dies. And time is running out.

​On paper, Drop is more or less your average one-location thriller that traps the protagonist out in the open as they desperately try to warn others around them. Think Joel Schumacher’s nail-biter, Phone Booth, or the Elijah Wood vehicle, Grand Piano. Films that subject our hero to the whims of a psychopath, where any wrong move can lead to death. The script from Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach (the pair behind Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare and Fantasy Island) sets this showdown between Violet and the “Dropper”, as we’ll call them, in an inescapable high-rise with a view that’ll have fellow acrophobics curling up inside of themselves. Everyone in the restaurant is a suspect, but characters outside of the potential lovebirds are written so thinly that it isn’t too difficult to decipher who’s dropping grenades on what should’ve been a romantic evening. Nor does the underlying plot offer up all that satisfying of a main course, either. Even the drops are quickly sent back to the kitchen, coming off like a bad studio note to include funny memes that the writers smartly pivot away from (the goofiness of these drops undercuts the tension more than anything).

Drop has two secret weapons, though: Christopher Landon and Meghann Fahy.
Landon channels the likes of cinema’s greatest suspense directors, from Hitchcock to De Palma and even a little Argento. The director and cinematographer Marc Spicer bring a visual flair to the film that plays the audience like a violin. Quick push-ins raise the tension. Dutch angles set the viewer on edge. Some sequences even reminded me of the claustrophobic Ryan Reynolds film, Buried, incorporating clever uses of lighting and zoom-outs to isolate Violet and express her utter loneliness in the situation despite being surrounded by others. Ben Baudhuin’s editing also adds a significant punch, creating a fast pace that fuels the anxiety pulsing off the screen. Callbacks to Violet’s past occasionally disrupt the heart-pounding flow, but nothing so egregious that it stalls the momentum. Having a talented composer like Bear McCreary also helps, with a score that consistently inspires a tingling dread. From top to bottom, Drop is a well-dressed date that delivers on thrills.

Of course, it takes a capable actor to make the somewhat ludicrous scenario believable, and Fahy is more than up to the task. Sklenar shines as well—the two have a chemistry that makes your heart flutter—but it’s Fahy that sells the terror of her predicament. A woman struggling after years of domestic abuse, still beating herself up for doing nothing and letting her son experience even one minute of it all, Fahy brings to life an empathetic character that makes you want to leap out of your seat and cheer for her. As she is pushed and pulled by the Dropper, forced into tasks that make her appear loony to Henry and fellow diners, Fahy’s gripping performance pulls you in. You feel her embarrassment. Her panic. Her outright terror as she attempts to outwit a villain who can see and hear her every move. What she goes through channels those bad dates we’ve all been on and exaggerates them to the nth degree. So much so that it’s easy to forget there’s a killer in the restaurant, because you just feel utterly embarrassed for Violet, this person who is only asking to be loved.

I would be lying if I said Drop isn’t a by the numbers thriller. It absolutely is. But with Landon’s inspired direction and a stellar performance from Fahy, the film transforms into an anxiety-driven date with terror that delivers on exactly what it promises, nothing more, nothing less, making for a simple yet thrilling ride.

Drop arrives in theaters on April 11th. 

By Matt Konopka