Drop (United States, 2025)

Drop starts out with Hitchcockian flair and rides a dizzying wave of anxiety-based mystery until, like far too many underwritten thrillers, it falls apart with the arrival of an ending that is laughably absurd in concept and execution. What starts out as a devilishly clever exercise in evasion and detection turns into a self-parody that climaxes with several eye-rolling whoppers. Well, at least it’s never boring.

The movie focuses on the first date between therapist/single mother Violet (Meghann Fahy) and photographer Henry (Brandon Sklenar). The two met online and, after chatting for several months, decided to meet in person – something they do in the swanky Chicago restaurant Palate, located some 40 floors above street level. This is the kind of place where they don’t put the prices on the menus. Violet has a few skeletons in her closet – mostly related to what happened at the end of her marriage to her abusive husband. Henry may have some as well, but he keeps them better hidden.

As the evening evolves, Violet realizes she’s being stalked. She keeps receiving vaguely threatening messages on her phone using an app called “DigiDrop” that requires the users be within 50 feet of one another. At first, these drops are little more than an annoyance, but then Violet is told to check her home security cameras, which reveal a masked intruder in her living room, ready and waiting to kill her pre-school-aged son, Toby (Jacob Robinson), and her younger sister, Jen (Violett Beane), who is babysitting. Unless she does what the messenger wants – and acts without telling anyone or revealing her situation – Toby and Jen are goners. Her task is straightforward but by no means simple: she has to (fatally) poison her date and steal a sim card from his camera.

Director Christopher Landon (whose earlier Blumhouse credentials include Happy Death Day and Freaky) has always been most at home making horror/thrillers with a comedic edge but he keeps Drop mostly grounded (so to speak). The movie’s intense opening scene ensures this isn’t going to be a light or fluffy experience. Landon effectively captures the world that is Palate, where more than half the movie transpires – there’s a sense of menace and claustrophobia in a location that paradoxically seems open to the air with its striking skyline views. Landon finds a way to keep the torrent of text messages from becoming tedious. Drop is nothing if not visually interesting.

Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar are best known for TV roles and, although they are fine for what they’re asked to do here, neither is a standout. There’s also not much in the way of chemistry between them – whatever connection they may have made during the online-only phase of their relationship doesn’t seem to have carried over.

For a movie that’s so smart for a majority of its running time, Drop gets real dumb real fast. Not only does the film try to do a few too many things during the waning scenes but it desperately wants to avoid being anticlimactic. So it goes in the opposite direction, moving on from poison to guns and knives. And we get all the tried-and-true cliches on auto-play: the Talking Killer (feels the need to prove his cleverness by explaining the whole plot), the Overconfident Killer (opts to torture instead of using his gun), and the Timex Killer (takes a licking and keeps on ticking).

Drop strung me along for about 70 of its 95 minutes and I was mostly enjoying the ride. Landon does a good job generating suspense and keeping the viewer guessing. But every movie needs an ending and this production might have been better without one. Or at least without this one.

Drop (United States, 2025)