‘Drop’ Review: We’re Not All Wes Craven and That’s Okay

Baby, we love a throwback. I’ve sung praises for AmbuLAnce, Road House, Venom, Novocaine and the entire ilk of modern movies that feel like throwbacks to a bygone era of fun, low-stakes thrillers. So I was primed for Drop, a thriller about a woman forced to do the bidding of an unseen villain who is sending threatening drops to her iPhone. And for the most part, the setup and the tone work to give audiences the tense thrill-ride out of days of Phone Booth yore, but a few logical missteps and some low-stakes reveals render this modern take a bit inert.

Chris Landon (Happy Death Day), who has written more of his own films than not, directed from a script by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach. He’s a natural fit for the premise, having success working a repetitive gimmick into a horror/ thriller. Here, his dynamic camera follows Meghann Fahy as Violet, a single mother trying to “get back out there,” and her date, Brandon Sklenar as Henry, the world’s most understanding dinner companion. Nerves almost get the best of the mom recovering from the trauma of domestic abuse ending in a death, but they’re barely an afterthought when she is suddenly at the whims of a mystery eye in the sky. Looking at her phone to check in with her sister, who is babysitting her young son, Violet is soon accosted by memes about her night being ruined, coming from a mysterious messenger somewhere in the restaurant. Soon the memes turn to threatening messages ordering her to kill her date lest masked home invaders kill her son. Of course, Violet would do anything to protect her son but struggles to be willing to murder the world’s only Good Guy still perusing dating apps.

It’s a plucky and dynamic battle of wits that leaves a polite and smiling Violent managing a spying and urgent threat while trying to maintain composure on her night out. Duress and a ticking clock are great backdrops for thrillers, as they automatically create high stakes that can make an audience feel trapped along with the lead. Updating to modern technology for this sort of story using something as simple as iPhone drops is inspired as it hits closer to the audience’s reality than the usual use of an all-seeing AI. Fahy commands stares like almost no other, and the movie keeps our eyes on her, as well as everyone else’s. Of course, everyone is a suspect, but Violet attracts long looks from everyone, making it next to impossible to solve who exactly is watching her. But the prime issue with the story is that who is watching her simply doesn’t matter. With every part of the motive and characters’ histories being secretive sub-twists, an ultimate reveal of “the people I work for” doesn’t amount to much. Sure, Violet has a secret past that perhaps made her a prime target to be a patsy in the murder of mysterious photographer, Henry, but her presence should be enough for the ploy, and the villain reveal contributes almost nothing.

While the story and its stakes don’t add up, there are lots of things that make the ride worth the price of admission. Landon and director of photography, Marc Spicer (Escape Room, Lights Out) seem to be having a lot of fun working with the movie’s single location. A stunning restaurant in the clouds leaves the characters contained and isolated, so games with lighting and a swirling camera POV keep everything in motion. Framed with a score from Bear McCreary (the prolific horror-thriller composer who also worked on Happy Death Day), Drop is an edge-of-your-seat watch for most of its beefy middle.

At the risk of clamoring for more of something I miss then immediately having a “not like this” reaction, Drop’s villain simply has nothing on Red Eye’s eighty-six-minute battle of wits with Cillian Murphy, no matter how otherwise apt the comparison. If I were Violet, it woulda been a much shorter movie: Henry snaps at waiters and deserved that poison cocktail.

Drop lands in theaters April 11, 2025