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It can be so refreshing to see an efficient thrill ride of a movie, a flick that knows what it wants to do and doesn’t waste time doing it. Christopher Landon’s “Drop” is one of those films, a thriller that unfolds in two locations with few characters, all in pursuit of providing as much entertainment as possible to ticket buyers. It is a film with old-fashioned charm in its structure and star power that is based on new technology. Although Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus) and Brandon Sklenar (1923) have reached their highest levels of television fame yet, they are still movie stars who the camera loves to focus on as they struggle through an unimaginable night. They have that hard-to-quantify thing called screen presence, something that some of the best thrillers ever made used as a foundation for generations of filmmaking.
I am not claiming that “Drop” is among the greatest thrillers ever made. But at a time when it feels like so many movies like this can’t settle on an identity, there’s something purely entertaining about seeing a movie that’s designed like a rollercoaster. Watch for the first drop. It’s a big one. Violet, played by Fahy, is first shown in a terrifying scene with her abusive partner. Toby’s father, played by Jacob Robinson, dies; the movie doesn’t say if Violet killed him or not. As a result, Violet has been reluctant to get back into the dating scene. She’s finally ready to go out to dinner with Henry (Sklenar), the person she’s been texting for years. He’s booked a table at a fancy Chicago restaurant named Palate, high above the Windy City. When he tells her to meet him at the bar because he’s running a little late, this thrill ride starts to get better. After a few casual encounters with other people at the restaurant, like the hostess, bartender, piano player, and a hapless fellow on a blind date, Violet gets a series of drops to her phone using an app called “DigiDrop.” They come from someone who is no more than 50 feet away, which means they are in the restaurant. At first, they look like harmless memes from the prom-goers’ table, but they get dark quickly. One reveals that they have a masked man at Violet’s home, ready to murder Toby and Violet’s sister, Jen (Violett Beane). Violet has to do everything the mysterious dropper says, or her sister and son will be murdered.
Of course, the main instruction for a thriller like this one is always that Violet can’t tell anyone. A lot of the first half of the film consists of Violet trying to ask for help but being unable to get that message to the right people, a narrative structure that plays as a sharp commentary on abused women being trapped by a system that doesn’t hear them. As her charming date patiently pushes through Violet’s erratic behavior, I started to worry that “Drop” would be a film about Prince Charming saving the day once he finally figures out that his date is being tormented. Still, Jillian Jacobs & Chris Roach’s script smartly avoid that trope. This is Violet’s story through and through, a tale of a survivor forced once again to do whatever it takes to save herself and her son.
When they move up to the big screen, small-screen actors occasionally lose some of what makes them unique. But that is absolutely not the case with Fahy, who has a striking immediacy here. If we don’t buy what Violet is going through, if we start questioning the admittedly convoluted machinations of the thriller plot machine, then “Drop” would fall. Fahy never lets that happen, and Landon smartly recognizes his greatest asset, rarely leaving her side. We become her partners in this nightmare, as uncertain of who is torturing her, why this is happening, or how to get out of it. The director of “Happy Death Day” and “Freaky” leaves most of the humor of those films behind to pivot to something more grounded, but he also never takes himself too seriously. He is a talented director, and he collaborates with talented collaborators to present a cohesive vision that never takes itself too seriously but still thrills, particularly editor Ben Baudhuin and great composer Bear McCreary. In retrospect, some of the plotting in “Drop” feels a bit nonsensical—the entire plan is a little nuts if one spends too long thinking about it—and the reveal of the true villain of the film is a bit underwhelming. While I was watching, I didn’t really care. Again, the rollercoaster analogy fits in that the anticipation and the peaks along the way are always more fun than the end. And this one won’t give you motion sickness.