A good genre mashup is often a fun time. The ingredients here are mixed when a single mom, Violet (Meghann Fahy), goes on a first date with Brandon (Henry Campbell), her longtime online fling. Brandon shows up suspiciously late (🤨) to the dinner. But on the bright side, the setting is a lavish high-rise restaurant with a beautiful window view of the skyline. Violet, however, remarks early on that she’s afraid of heights, perhaps ominous foreshadowing that she’s about to have the date from hell. That forewarning is confirmed when she begins receiving mysterious messages from an unknown person, threatening her and her child in an attempt to force Violet to do their bizarre bidding.
Drop will hardly be on many ‘Best Of’ lists at the end of the year, but it makes for the prototypical popcorn movie, a comfort food with easy laughs and easy scares. The film takes the shape of a whodunit, where the perpetrator claims to be a patron in the restaurant. But Violet can’t simply leave, call the cops, or turn her phone off without sentencing her young child to his demise. So, very clever in terms of making cell phones an obstacle that accelerates the conflict, as opposed to potentially preventing conflict.
Fahy has an easy-going movie star charm, establishing a likable character who’s also empathetic due to being a survivor of abuse. The screenplay clearly wants you to warm up to her early on, as she’s seen providing therapy via Zoom. Given the somewhat shallow nature of the production, the film doesn’t really go into great depth into the topics of trauma, abuse, or therapy, a better film would, but Violet is a character you’d like to root for and believe the best in. She even manages to give some words of encouragement to a nervous attendee just before their date arrives, even as she’s still waiting at the bar for her tardy boyfriend.
But when the stakes begin to mount, Violet is tasked with carrying out a multitude of incriminating offenses in order to satiate the goals of her harasser. Much of this is communicated via large texts on the screen, written in the font of Dramatic. Your milage may vary on how effective this is as visual storytelling, but it’s at least big and bold and fits the over the top tone of the story. The situational suspense and the dire predicament of the protagonist is a bit Hitchcockian, although I would temper that comparison by stating this is like the Screen Gems/CW/Blumhouse version of a Hitchcock story. However, not all the story choices are sound in terms of concealing the film’s mysteries – even if you give just a second of a thought into certain scenes. But what is effectively conveyed is how resourceful Violet is as a protagonist, often having to make insanely quick decisions while faced with potentially fatal circumstances.
The film is, at times, a bit all over the place with its tone. But director Christopher Landen likes to keep things light, sprinkling in comic relief characters like an energetic, loquacious waiter (Jeffery Self) who’s intentionally a bit too talkative. Technically, Drop can be considered a horror flick, but it’s probably more accurate to label it as a thriller with some action elements. When all hell breaks loose and the big showdown occurs, the movie is less reliant on scares and more so on stunts and special effects. The restaurant itself is well constructed, a marvel of production design that gives the movie character and a setting we enjoy occupying, since most of the movie takes place here. There is, however, a big drawn-out fight at the end that’s still reminiscent of too many, “and then they redeemed their trouble with guns…” that’s somewhat unremarkable.
What may be underrated about the film is its romantic elements, as Fahy and Campbell have plenty of chemistry to make their courtship believable. Fahy does a lot of her acting with facial expressions and inflections in her speech, while he does well playing the rugged, gruff man with a smooth voice. Truthfully, without the leads giving solid performances, I don’t know if this story works. The gimmick of the screenplay is a worthwhile start to a story, but I wouldn’t say the destinations we get to from that are all that interesting, including an antagonist(s?) that are a little underwritten. Luckily, the two lead performances anchor the movie well, putting the audience at ease and taking them on a wild ride. It may not be the ideal date, but it’s never boring.
Our rating:
