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James Marsh

2/5 stars
First dates can be murder. This is especially true for Violet (Meghann Fahy), the heroine of Christopher Landon’s latest high-concept thriller, Drop, who receives anonymous and increasingly threatening messages on her cellphone while on her first night out following the death of her husband.
The evening comes to a head when she is ordered to murder her date, Henry (Brandon Sklenar), or risk her young son being killed instead.
Fahy, best known for her performance in season two of The White Lotus, is convincingly discombobulated as Violet, a victim of domestic abuse who is taking her first tentative steps back out into the dating world.


Sklenar (It Ends With Us), as Violet’s all-too-understanding new love interest, is similarly on point, skirting the line between impossibly charming and potentially dangerous as Violet’s perilous situation escalates.
Screenwriters Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach (Truth or Dare) further amplify the situation by positioning Violet and Henry in a swanky fine-dining restaurant on the top floor of a Chicago skyscraper where a certain decorum must be observed.
Realising that her every word and action are being surveilled, she can only look on in horror as her home CCTV system reveals that her sister (Violett Beane) and young son are being threatened at gunpoint by a masked intruder.
Landon has fashioned a successful career delivering wildly imaginative and consistently entertaining B-movie crowd pleasers since getting his start penning the bulk of the Paranormal Activity franchise.

Happy Death Day and Freaky in particular were fresh new takes on the slasher genre, incorporating time-loop and body-swap narratives, respectively, to winning effect.
What helped those films truly excel was their strongly comedic bent – a postmodern self-awareness of horror and science fiction tropes, which were addressed with tongue firmly in cheek.
While Drop certainly finds fun in its increasingly ridiculous premise, that playful sense of humour is mostly lacking. Landon plays things straight – or as straight as one can given the film’s inherently implausible premise.
In between Violet wrestling with her moral quandary and eyeballing the restaurant’s varied clientele, Drop attempts to broach some weighty topics.

The increasingly invasive nature of cellphone culture, the resilience of victims of past trauma, and the inherent dangers of the dating scene are all paid lip service, but little attempt is made to explore them in much detail.
Much like Violet, Drop is really just eyeing a fun time on a Friday night, but her preposterous predicament quickly outgrows any semblance of reality, and probably does not warrant a second date.
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Drop movie review: first date goes wrong in clumsy thriller by Happy Death Day director

Meghann Fahy as Violet in a still from Drop. Photo: Universal Pictures

Meghann Fahy as Violet in a still from Drop (category IIA), which co-stars Brandon Sklenar. Christopher Landon directs. Photo: Universal Pictures

Violett Beane as Jen in a still from Drop. Photo: Universal Pictures

Meghann Fahy as Violet and Brandon Sklenar as Henry in a still from Drop. Photo: Universal Pictures

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The White Lotus’ Meghann Fahy plays a widow on a first date who faces a terrifying quandary in Christopher Landon’s implausible film


The White Lotus’ Meghann Fahy plays a widow on a first date who faces a terrifying quandary in Christopher Landon’s implausible film.


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Review | Drop movie review: first date goes wrong in clumsy thriller by Happy Death Day director

The White Lotus’ Meghann Fahy plays a widow on a first date who faces a terrifying quandary in Christopher Landon’s implausible film