Christopher Landon excels at making gimmicky movies, and I mean that in the best way possible. To be clear, I’m not saying he’s gimmicky in the William Castle sense, where he’s electrifying movie theater seats.* Landon directs and/or writes movies which have a gimmicky premise, and he excels at making the most of those premises. A few of them are:

• Happy Death Day, in which a college party girl is trapped in a time loop with a masked killer.
• Freaky, in which a hulking slasher and his teenage victim swap bodies.
• Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, in which the film lives up to the title.
• We Have a Ghost, in which the new owners of a house contend with the longtime undead resident.

Landon excels at genre filmmaking, and more often than not, his name is a mark of quality. When I heard in 2023 he was attached to direct Scream 7, I was a little disappointed he’d be locked into a franchise instead of creating original works. It turned into a good news/bad news scenario. The bad news was that production on Scream 7 imploded and Landon walked away. The good news was that Landon went on to make Drop, a clever little thriller that (mostly) works like gangbusters.

When we first meet Violet (Meghann Fahy), she’s in danger. Her husband, another in a long line of men who confuse volume with strength, menaces her with a gun. The armed standoff ends with him dead. Years later, Violet pursues a career as a therapist and raises her young son, Toby (Jacob Robinson). 

As you might imagine, Violet is a little gun shy (Haw!) about re-entering the dating scene. She thinks she might be ready since, for a few months, she’s been texting with Henry (Brandon Sklenar). He’s a nice man who’s content with things moving slowly. Texting will only move a relationship so far, and Violet tentatively agrees to an honest-to-God in person first date.

They agree to meet at Palate, a fancy schmancy restaurant high atop a Chicago skyscraper. Henry texts Violet, and tells her he’s running a bit late. Will she meet him at the bar? She agrees, and while nursing a drink, she makes the acquaintance of a friendly bartender (Gabrielle Ryan), a dweeb (Reed Diamond) on a disastrous blind date, and others. 

Once Henry arrives, they’re seated, and other than their supremely annoying waiter (Jeffery Self), things seem to be going well. Spoiler alert – they stop going well when Violet begins receiving AirDrops (the film calls them DigiDrops) on her phone. They begin as annoying memes and escalate to threats and footage from Violet’s home of an armed man stalking her son and her sister (Violett Beane). Whoever is sending her the messages, they’re up to fifty feet away. What does the digital lunatic want from Violet? Simple. Her job is to kill Henry.

As the director of Drop, Landon understands that his primary job is not to screw around. He’s made a tight, one hundred minute film that introduces the players, sets up the premise, executes quite a lot of the variations of the premise, and gets us out of the theater with a smile. Along with impeccable pacing, Landon effectively shifts the tone from comedy to light romance to taut suspense.** Landon also leans into visual style by showing us the messages from her online tormentor in an onscreen blocky chyron. Is a threatening message stretching over Violet’s head in gigantic letters kind of cheesy? Yes, but more importantly, it’s cool!

Landon helped to develop the screenplay with screenwriters Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach. The end result is a script that, for four-fifths-ish of the runtime, is tense, clever, and often very funny. They merge together two concepts, the first being a whodunit. Who’s contacting Violet? Is it the tech bro? The table of kids at dinner before prom? The piano player? Someone else? A good deal of fun is had with clues, red herrings, and misdirects, while the writers always play fair. The other fun concept is watching Violet and the unsub countering each other while Violet simultaneously tries to keep the date from going off the rails. It’s all good until a ten minute stretch of the climax that mostly involves running, shooting, fighting, and screaming. I’m not opposed to any of those things, it’s just that for those ten minutes, the story shifts from clever to fast.

The actors understand the assignment, and they show up to play. I don’t know if movie stars exist any longer, but the roles of Violet and Henry are star-making performances. Meghann Fahy sells us on Violet’s conflicting needs. She needs to do whatever she can to keep her son and sister safe, while also needing to protect Henry, while dealing with PTSD caused by her ex, while also being attracted to the nice guy across the table. It’s a sophisticated and smart performance. She’s well matched with Brandon Sklenar as the ridiculously understanding Henry. Ask yourself this – would you stick around during a date if the person you liked was distracted, constantly checking their phone, leaving the table, and behaving erratically? What if they asked you, begged you to stay? What if you knew that this person had been through some nasty stuff in their past? Sklenar believably shifts through all those emotional points of view. Henry knows something is going on with Violet, and that she’s not just a flake. I also enjoyed Jeffery Self as their hyper-irritating waiter by way of improv performer. He’s broad, but as the comic relief, he needs to be.

In my theater, Drop had the crowd eating out of its hand. There were big laughs, a few gasps, and an audible cheer. Christopher Landon, along with his cast and crew, have made the very definition of a crowd pleaser. It’s true that the movie is gimmicky as hell, but it’s more true that it’s an absolute blast.

*Though I wouldn’t be opposed to it. 

**Having said that, there will be people annoyed by the decision to use Violet’s trauma as something of a plot point. The reason is that Landon has made, not a character study about trauma, but a thriller. Does that make the film slight? Not at all, it simply means that those folks will be mad that the film isn’t what they want it to be instead of engaging with it on its own terms.***

***Speaking of which, there will be those who will ask the question, “Why doesn’t Violent just turn off DigiDrop entirely?” Well, it’s due to this thing called “suspension of disbelief.”

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.