You’ve got to love a good old Hitchcockian gimmick, right? You know, the ones that minimise the cast and locations to act out a tense, nail biting thriller that is all the more impressive due to its limitations. From Ryan Reynolds trying to escape from an underground coffin in Buried, to Colin Farrell targeted by a mad sniper while his cowers within a titular Phone Booth, to Rachel McAdams trying to fend off the chilling machinations of Cillian Murphy on an overnight flight in Red Eye, the more restrained the circumstances, the more filmmakers have to strain to concoct ways to draw these unlikely scenarios out.
The latest example of this is Christopher Landon’s Drop, a movie that sees that most stressful of occasions – the first date – take on nightmare proportions when a young woman starts having her evening interrupted by sinister phone drops. With a director no stranger to constructing movies around outlandish happenstances (Happy Death Day, Freaky), can this ambitious thriller bring the goods and not drop the ball?
Violet Gates hasn’t exactly had a smooth ride when it comes to love. While she has Toby, her young son she loves very much, his father was violent and abusive and one especially brutal night, he lost his life to a gunshot wound that may or may not come from suspicious circumstances. However, years have past and after taking up work as a therapist for women who have suffered similar experiences, she’s decided that it’s finally time for her to date again. The lucky guy is photographer Henry Campbell, a man who she’s been talking to for months on a dating app and for their big night out, they’ve booked a table at Palate, a high-rise restaurant with stunning views of the city at night. After getting her sister, Jen, to babysit and help her settle on an outfit, Violet steps out of her cab, takes a deep breath and takes the plunge back into thr dating scene.
At first, everything seems fine. The woman tending bar boosts her confidence, a man on a blind date wishes her luck and she even is hit on by the restaurant’s resident piano player and soon Henry turns up and the conversation flows nicely. However, one thing that continues to ruin the ambience of the evening is the contant Digi-Drops that keep causing Violet’s phone to buzz obnoxiously thanks to a mystery sender. However, the random, slightly threatening memes soon give way to instructions and threats and soon she finds herself caught in a text-based game of cat and mouse. You see, whoever is sending her these messages informs her that there is a masked man with a gun in her house and he will kill her son and sister if she doesn’t fulfil the tasks this malevolent texter sets her. Long story short, her blackmailer wants her to murder her own date for various reasons and she has to do it without anyone around her figuring out what’s going on. Can Violet possibly manage to worm her way through an unwinnable scenario with her son’s life on the line? Man, dating sucks.
So, the first thing I have to say about Drop is that it’s made me pretty pissed that the whole Scream 7 deal for Christopher Landon turned so sour because considering this movie sees him handling sinister phone activity, female leads with past trauma, masked assailant stalking through houses and a while mystery villain element, he would have been a worthy successor to Radio Silence. Of course, Landon’s no stranger to slashers either thanks to the vastly entertaining Happy Death Day and Freaky, but while both those movies had a rather happy-go-lucky tone to go with the body count, Drop sees Landon taking a mature attitude to the thrills at hand. There’s no constant wise cracks or bouts of slapstick to help the director out this time as he’s crafting a more serious, mature and noticably Hitchcockian feel this time around and as if to deliver a statement of intent, he immediately grounds the movie by having his lead be a survivor of domestic abuse. Not only does this make sure that any notion of Drop being tongue in cheek are immediately dispelled, but it immediately puts Violet in the position of a former victim who already knows what its like to have control stripped from their life.
That’s not to say Drop isn’t fun, it’s just that Landon is ensuring that his characters are far more real than ones he’s had to direct for a while (no one was ever going to accuse Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse of realism) and when the movie gets started he makes sure he also wrings every bit of relatable dread out of the act of going on a first date after years of inaction. It’s here where Meghann Fahy takes over and proves that Landon still has a knack for picking great female leads. Radiating vulnerability from big eyes but never playing it safe by going mousey, Fahy gives us a lead to root for and whether it’s taking the plunge and entering the dating scene once more or fielding stern orders to kill from her phone, we’re behind her every step of the way as she has to getvacross that she’s the only one (other than us) that’s privy to what is actually going on. It also helps that she has easy chemistry with Brandon Sklenar as her date and the fact that they make such a charismatic couple means that Landon is freed up to throw every trick in the book to keep such a limited sandbox visually interesting.
I’ve mentioned Hitchcock a couple of times now, but this is exactly the sort of directing challenge that the legendary filmmajer would have relished if he’d lived long enough to see the smart phone come around (Dial M For Meme, anyone?).
To take up the challenge, Landon hurls all sorts of trickery at the screen starting with long takes that move you round the restaurant to give you a feel of the space and random meetings with the various players who may either provide salvation or suspicion in equal measure. From there, the movie really goes to town; the texts from the mystery mastermind appear on the screen in huge, glowing text like devestating words from an angered God; footage from her house cameras show up behind her on the walls of a toilet stall while Violet desperately searches for footage of her sin and a various moments, the whole world around her darkens while Fahy is put in an almost literal spotlight as the fact that she’s so terribly alone is hammered home in visual style.
It all results in a entertaining thriller that’s very likable – however, Drop proves to be one bad reception away from greatness thanks to the fact is that for all it’s bells and whistles, you really have seen this type of movie before and not even Fahy’s winning performance and Landon’s admirable directorial fuckery is enough to prevent the film feeling like it’s dragging the concept out, even at a lean 100 minutes. The build up is great and the ending – while a mite derivative of Red Eye – is exciting, the trials and tribulations of the restaurant itself start to get a little repetitive after a while as the virtual chess game between hunter and hunted starts to eat its own tail.
Despite not being able to sustain its concept as long as it hoped, Drop still proves to be a fun night out with all the thrills, spills and reveals you could hope for from a trick laden pulse pounder, although like most traumatic first dates, you might have some trouble remembering it the morning after…
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