Somebody in Hollywood (and specifically screenwriters Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach) heard my complaints about mainstream American movies ignoring the modern world. How else to explain Drop, a new Christopher Landon-directed thriller featuring thrillers centered around the iPhone's AirDrop feature, which allows folks to share pictures with nearby phones. Clearly my internet ramblings are influencing Hollywood. Now it’s time to go mad with my power. Quick! Hollywood! Make a screwball comedy starring Amy Adams, Ayo Edebiri, and Creech! I demand it!
Before all that AirDropping, Drop focuses on single mom Violet (Meghann Fahy), who works as a therapist specializing in survivors of abusive relationships. Having previously been trapped in such a dynamic, she's got the expertise to help others. However, it's often much easier to exert kindness to others than to ourselves. So it is with Violet, who’s hesitant to follow advice she gives her patients and embrace the future. In this case, that future means going out on a first date with hunky dude Henry (Brandon Sklenar) from a dating app.
Violet eventually tears herself away from her home and son and heads off to this meet-up on the 38th floor of a fancy as heck Chicago eatery. Almost immediately, though, her rendezvous with dreamy Henry is interrupted. Menacing memes keep “dropping” into her phone. Soon, texts from a mysterious stranger also bombard Violet’s device. They all instruct her to be a “good girl” and follow this person’s direction. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t even think of asking for help. Her son’s life is on the line. This is going to be an even more stressful than usual first date.
More terrifying than any menacing drops is the editing in an early Drop scene. This sequence chronicles a creepy dude accosting Violet while bartender Cara (Gabrielle Ryan Spring) comes to her aid. In this scene, Landon and editor Ben Baudhuin keep the camera cutting back and forth between close-up shots of these three people, with none of the images lasting more than a few seconds. It's a disorienting approach that doesn't radiate specificity or accentuate a tense atmosphere. Instead, it reeks of downright laziness. All the fascinating possibilities of visually reflecting Violet’s psyche in this moment are instead eschewed for boring close-ups.
Drop’s camerawork and editing often feature such distractingly clumsy choices. This even includes dialogue-heavy sequences with Violet and Henry. At times, I wondered if the pair were ever on-set at the same time given how rarely they occupy the same shot. Such frustrating shortcomings are a shame because there are interesting images in Drop. More grandiose digressions from reality (like the restaurant going dark as a spotlight descends on potential culprits behind the drops) are memorable. Recurring Dutch angles are also a welcome touch for reinforcing tension. However, generally, Drop opts for pedestrian cramped framing. What a disappointment given the legacy of movies set largely or exclusively in one location with exemplary blocking and camerawork like Rope, 12 Angry Men, or even last year's Trap.
While Drop is sometimes downright terrible in its editing and cinematography, it’s nonetheless serviceable as a fun Saturday night thriller. Part of what makes the suspense work nicely is Landon and the screenwriter’s leaning into exacerbating inherent first-date awkwardness. Rather than constantly having geysers of blood sprout up to create tension, Drop instills viewer anxiety by echoing instances where your dates on their phone a little too much or outright vanishes for prolonged stretches of time. Meeting up with someone in a romantic context for the first time is always scary and rife with uncertainty. Drop smartly exploits those sensations to lend emotional immediacy to Violet’s terrifying circumstances.
The constraints of both a PG-13 feature and being a mainstream Blumhouse title mean Drop’s premise can’t quite reach its most extreme or fun potential. However, within those confines, it still got me clenching my fists in dread more often than not. Plus, the confined scope lets supporting performers like Jeffrey Self (here playing super exuberant waiter Matt) plenty of opportunities to shine. Anchoring the proceedings, Meghann Fahy never blew me away as Violet, but she still provides a serviceable human anchor for the proceedings.
Meanwhile, Drop is the movie that made me come around to Brandon Sklenar's potential as a leading man. I don't know if he's got much range or depth as a performer. However, I can immediately see his appeal as a romantic lead. Sklenar's Drop aura combines a gruff Jeffrey Dean Morgan exterior with a softboi Hugh Grant interior. He looks like a guy who could build you a barn one minute yet still say phrases like “I’m a strawberry girl” when he’s cozying up with you on the couch. That’s a rare balance in modern leading men, who often look too perfectly muscular to function as just “the guy next door.” Sklenar gets to display that authoritative warmth consistently in Drop within a character that has minimal depth on the page.
Sklenar and Fahy’s competent acting certainly helps make the awkward editing and framing choices in Violet and Henry’s dinnertime scenes an easier pill to swallow. Other Drop flaws, though, aren’t paired with any creative ointment to make them more tolerable. Landon's go-to composer Bear McCreary, for instance, delivers a largely forgettable score save for a leitmotif for a masked villain that sounds distractingly similar to Daniel Pemberton's Spider-Verse track "The Prowler." Other supporting Drop players (who function as potential culprits behind those ominous AirDrop texts and images), meanwhile, are mostly interchangeable restaurant patrons. While Landon’s Happy Death Day had an ensemble cast where everyone left a mark, Drop has a more generic roster of fictional players.
More admirable is Landon’s commitment to juggling both a campy thriller and a serious meditation on existing in the aftermath of an abusive relationship. Unfortunately, in both molds, Drop isn’t quite sublime. There are more engrossing single-room thrillers than this. Meanwhile, cinema’s history is rife with superior explorations of abuse survivors. Heck, Cannibal Mukbang just covered similarly heavy material with visual finesse while also delivering infinitely more fun and twisted mayhem. Both halves of this cinematic Twix bar are passable. However, they also leave you wishing you’d grabbed a more scrumptious candy bar. Still, if a Twix is what you’re hankering, Drop should leave you placated. Next time I make a decree for Hollywood, I need to remember to emphasize rectifications to Drop’s shortcomings.