Director: Christopher Landon
Writer: Jillian Jacobs, Chris Roach
Stars: Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Violett Beane
Synopsis: A widowed mother’s first date in years takes a terrifying turn when she’s bombarded with anonymous threatening messages on her phone during their upscale dinner, leaving her questioning if her charming date is behind the harassment.
Drop is an excellent idea for a thriller. A single mother, hesitant to dive back into the dating pool after being a victim of domestic abuse, is forced to murder the first man she’s met in ages on their first date. It’s cleverly cruel and adds a modern twist to the classic genre, like a strange love child of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Nick of Time. The final product is suspenseful, sometimes gratingly annoying, but always a bloody good time.
If only they had found a fresher way to end the third act, they could have really had something.
The script by Jillian Jacobs (Fantasy Island) and Chris Roach (Truth or Dare) follows Violet (The White Lotus’s Meghann Fahy), who is raising her nine-year-old son alone after being deemed responsible for the death of her abusive husband. Violet has been messaging Henry (It Ends With Us’ Brandon Sklenar), a hunky dreamboat who travels the world taking pictures for a living.
(Sure, Sklenar is the second coming of Harrison Ford, but personally, it sounds like he needs to get a real job, but Violet has lowered her standards in the past decade.)
Henry shows up, sporting some Hasselhoff chest hair, no coat or tie (classy guy), with an adventurous aura, saying he had to bring his camera bag up with him (and probably a Tom Selleck mustache comb) to the date or it might be stolen. Before he arrives, Violet meets a host of interesting characters, like a vivacious bartender (Gabrielle Ryan), an anxious gentleman on a blind date (Reed Diamond), and a lecherous piano player who hasn’t met a stiff drink he couldn’t fight off before near-inebriation.
While waiting, she begins to receive constant and insistent AirDrops to her cell phone. Violet keeps checking her phone because she wants to make sure it’s not from her sister Jen, who is babysitting her son tonight. Proving that Sklenar is not as dreamy as everyone says, Violet doesn’t get lost in those baby brown peepers. Instead, she keeps getting distracted over and over by the drops until she finally answers. It turns out there is a man in her house, and if Violet doesn’t do what the man on the other end of the digital messaging feature says, he will kill her son.
Drop is the new film from Christopher Landon, who has a history of innovative modern horror thrillers with Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U, and Freaky, has made a good genre picture here, which rides the coattails of a strong performance from Fahy, who is excellent here. The beginning is suspenseful but oddly irritating, simply because Violet’s phone vibrates every few seconds. It’s odd, being one of the most annoying things to happen during a movie is a phone going off, making it a vexing plot in the film.
What transpired made me want to give Sklenar’s Henry a Klondike Bar, a product placement opportunity they missed at the movie’s end. Any other date would have left after the first hundred interruptions, but never question the possibility of taking a beautiful person home with you to see the forest for the trees. That’s the key to Drop: you have to suspend belief often, like Trap, and just turn your brain off to enjoy it. This is fine because not every movie is meant to be a work of art or Oscar bait.
The movie is fast-paced, sensationalized, and clearly over the top, but it’s a lot of fun. The characters are quirky, and the script does a nice job of keeping the potential suspects in the shadows. The reveal of the villain is well done. Unfortunately, I can’t specifically tell you how much I enjoyed how the actor revels in the role due to spoilers. It’s campy but scene-stealing and key to enjoying the experience.
Essentially, Drop is the perfect date movie. It’s an emotional rollercoaster full of adrenaline and excitement and clever at times, even though the third act has an atrociously bad ending involving a children’s toy. Fahy’s lead performance and her chemistry with Sklenar carry the viewer through the experience, which is enjoyable yet likely forgettable.
You can watch Drop only in theaters on April 11th.
