Drop: Movie Review

Cast: Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Reed Diamond, Violett Beane, Gabrielle Ryan
Director: Christopher Landon

The White Lotus' second season breakout star Meghann Fahy elevates an already tightly written story that lapses into an explosion of violence after simmering throughout in this latest from the director of Happy Death Day.

She plays widowed single mother of one Violet, who's heading out on her first date night with photographer Henry (It Ends With Us' Sklenar) but who's riddled with doubts over whether to go, what to wear and if she should leave her son.

However, when she gets to the restaurant, that's the least of her worries after a series of messages sent to her phone anonymously threaten to kill her son if she doesn't murder her date....

Landon stretches the premise as far as it'll go with this tale, but wisely, using a kind of roulette charm approach to who may be sending the messages works wonders for Drop's simple premise.

Deploying stage-style lighting to drop in and out to pinpoint possible perpetrators and giving the direction a kind of play feel helps sell a story that sees the old adage "everyone's a suspect" come into play. There's a desire here to stick solely to what's expected and Drop delivers it.

Yet it would be nothing without Fahy, whose penchant for subtlety and turning on the slightest moment gives Drop an edge that it needs. With steely determination one moment and extreme vulnerability the next, she's eminently watchable throughout, her spark with Sklenar working stronger on her side than his.

But it never wants to be more than a popcorn movie, where the audience is the detective (giving it a Hitchcockian edge) looking like Violet to find where the suspect could be - with blaring on screen graphics and an over-reliance on the 21st century obsession with technology, the film's contemporary enough to hook in the younger audience, while lightly mocking the older end's uselessness with tech and not alienating those in the middle.

Perhaps the one weak point in Drop's rollercoaster ride is its sudden rush denouement, complete with explanations, boogeymen and horror violence. It feels somewhat of an affront to what's already happened, but it's the payoff the audience seeks - though whether that's a good thing remains to be seen.

Drop is worth dropping everything for - but with its occasional logic holes and its clever teasing of the situation, it's a welcome one and done for a Blumhouse outing that does exactly what it sets out to.