A Crafty and Tense Tech Thriller

Goofy, high-concept horror efforts succeed or fail based on more than just the talent involved or their dedication to the bit. Christopher Landon, as evidenced by genre mashups like Happy Death Day, Freaky, and Heart Eyes, understands that when the stakes are sky high, the emotions need to be firmly grounded. This is especially apropos for Drop, a high-rise-set, single-location thriller that delivers its shocks liberally mixed with the easy humor and unpretentious emotionality that’s become the filmmaker’s stock in trade.

Violet (Meghann Fahy) is a thirtysomething widow and single mom still haunted by the violent death of her abusive husband. Between working as a therapist for women in similar situations and providing for her young son, Toby (Jacob Robinson), she has little time for romance. After months of patient chatting on a dating app, though, Violet agrees to meet Henry (Brandon Sklenar) for dinner at an upscale restaurant situated in a skyscraper in downtown Chicago.

The date gets off to a great start until Violet starts receiving vaguely ominous memes airdropped to her phone. She thinks nothing of it, with Henry assuring her that someone nearby is just pranking her. But the memes soon turn into direct threats, convincing her that her child’s life is under threat if she tells anyone what’s going on and doesn’t do exactly as she’s told.

Drop’s hook will be relatable to anybody who’s ever used their Airdrop function and taken note of just how many others in their immediate area have their devices connected to a network for transmission. The film has it both ways, making humorous light of unwanted dick pics while also pointing out how frighteningly exposed we are, and how we fail to protect our personal information and security in the name of technological ease and connectedness.

But that’s only a piece of the film’s broader narrative of Violet’s abuse and her being a survivor who finds her fragile sense of peace and safety again open to attack. Recalling Jessica Rothe in the Happy Death Day movies, Fahy gamely tackles Drop’s escalating absurdities while also anchoring its emotional center, turning the potentially contrived into something near sublime with an open-wound performance that’s both raw and confident. She’s supported by a soulful Sklenar, with whom she has exceptionally easy chemistry, and though the film isn’t quite a two-hander, it’s exciting to watch the two actors navigate this date from hell.

Drop unspools in real time, and one of the more fun elements of Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Roach’s script is how it allows smaller stories to unfold around Violet and Henry and slowly brings them into the bigger drama at its center. Jeffery Self is cringe-comedy perfection as the overfamiliar server, Gabrielle Ryan offers some welcome feminine solidarity for Violet as a seen-it-all bartender, and Reed Diamond is sneakily excellent as an older gentleman waiting nervously for a blind date and who may or may not have something up his sleeve.

Hitchcockian is a term so overused as to be rendered worthless, but it’s plain to see that Jacobs and Roach have paid attention to the Master of Suspense in how to build a lean, character-centered thriller using every inch of the limited canvas they’ve stretched for themselves. As we’ve come to expect from Landon, Drop is a tense, entertainment-first experience that doesn’t skimp on emotional investment and payoff. Its climactic revelations are nothing special, but it’s the panache with which Landon delivers them, the way he gives good actors room to breathe, and how he mines the schlocky for something just a touch more sincere that makes Drop not just a cut, but several stories above gimmicky thrillers of its ilk.