Meghann Fahy Endures a Lethal Date in Blumhouse Horror

In Christopher Landon’s Drop, a widowed mother bravely returns to the dating scene only to find herself caught in an awful game of cat and mouse. Following in the footsteps of films like Phone Booth, Red Eye and, more recently, Carry-On, this Blumhouse production, which premiered at SXSW before its theatrical release in April, balances its pulpy narrative with an escalating and terrifying tension. Landon’s command of suspense, coupled with a compelling romantic thread and delightful performances from Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus) and Brandon Sklenar, make Drop a solid popcorn movie. 

Like its cinematic predecessors, Drop‘s premise relies on compromised technology and nefarious anonymous actors. It’s best experienced with little to no information, so for the spoiler-averse, it’s time to abandon this review.

During a first date dinner with Henry (Sklenar), a photographer she met on an app, Violet (Fahy) begins receiving annoying “digiDrops” from an unknown user. The fictional program is based on AirDrop, a wireless feature that allows Apple users to send and receive files from users within a certain distance. At first, Violet receives weird memes goading her to accept the incoming message. Henry encourages her to disregard them, hypothesizing that it’s likely a group of teenagers at a nearby table.

But as the messages get increasingly hostile, they become harder for Violet to ignore. She soon realizes that the anonymous sender is holding her son Toby (Jack Robinson) hostage. If Violet doesn’t do what they say, he will die.

Even before Violet was confronted with this harrowing ultimatum, she was a ball of nervous energy. Landon builds suspense for this moment, the first of many twists in Drop, by starting the film with romantic-comedy aspirations. We see Violet anxiously preparing for the date with her sister Jen (Violett Beane), who has agreed to babysit Toby. The single mother, who is a therapist for domestic violence survivors, hasn’t been on a date since her ex-husband died. The relationship was abusive and her grief is marked by complicated feelings. For the most part, Drop handles this part of the story with sensitivity, though a third-act confrontation didn’t sit right with this critic.  

When Violet arrives at the date spot, a luxurious restaurant tucked in a towering high-rise somewhere in Chicago, her nerves are frayed. She’s changed outfits three times and worries about not being home for Toby’s bedtime routine. Henry, a photographer for the mayor’s office, seems like a nice guy, but she feels awkward about making him wait three months for dinner. A few key interactions help put Violet at ease: She meets an older man (Reed Diamond) also on a first date and bonds with the affable bartender (Gabrielle Ryan). 

By the time Henry arrives, Violet is visibly calmer. The pair immediately hit it off —  indulging in each other’s awkward bits and bonding through people-watching. Fahy and Sklenar pepper their characters’ interactions with the pauses and stolen glances that make the asynchronicity of early romantic encounters so endearing. The couple’s waiter (Search Party’s Jeffrey Self), is an aspiring stand-up comic, whose clumsiness on the job helps ease their apprehensiveness. And a charming atmosphere, reinforced by a warm visual language (Marc Spicer serves as DP), dulls the creepiness of those early drops. It lulls us into a false sense of ease, much like the meet-cute between Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams’ characters in Red Eye. 

Landon, working from a screenplay by Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Roach, steadily builds suspense from this moment forward. Intimate shots, which reinforce the early romanticism, make way for unnerving wide-angle close-ups and pans that transform this high-end restaurant into a gilded prison. Drop feels even more claustrophobic when Landon overlays Violet’s messages onto the screen. There are moments when this aesthetic choice verges on gimmick, but for the most part it works. And Susie Cullen’s production design turns typical markers of a fine-dining environment — windowless bathroom stalls; orange mood lighting; a stoic staff — into elements of a garish nightmare. 

There’s a campiness to Drop’s drama that makes the whole affair kind of silly, but Fahy’s performance sells us on it. The actress plays the clumsiness of a first date with the same conviction as the agita caused by someone threatening her son’s life. Even when the story defies logic, as it frequently does, Fahy shapes a compelling character audiences can laugh with and root for.