Drop

Christopher Landon has become one of my favorite modern directors. Apart from his astonishingly toxic debut movie Burning Palms, I've enjoyed almost everything I've seen of his, especially Happy Death Day and Freaky. I was interested to see him step outside comedy-horror and go for a more straight-forward thriller. Drop is sort of a millennial Hitchcock-style movie. A widow (and survivor of an abusive marriage) goes on her first date in forever, and starts getting mysterious messages on her phone -- her son is being held hostage, and if she doesn't kill her date, her son will die. Drop's plot is all about her trying to outsmart the seemingly omnipresent observer manipulating her. I feel the need to reiterate, before anybody gets the wrong idea, that I said "sort of" a millennial Hitchcock movie. Landon is a fun director. In movies like Happy Death Day and Freaky, he showed a deft hand in balancing witty dialogue, comedic situations, actual tension and horror, and genuine emotion. He could weave in themes of personal discovery, self-esteem issues, and coming to terms with loss with crazy ideas like a teenage girl inhabiting the body of a serial killer a foot and a half taller than her. Drop doesn't afford him that opportunity. There are some comedic moments, but they're just that, moments. Drop is, first and foremost, a tense thriller. And Landon is not Hitchcock. He does a better impersonation than the grossly overrated Brian de Palma, but this is still outside his wheelhouse, and there are moments when it shows. Drop is supposed to be a thriller, but the concept of it is so unabashedly implausible, it requires the viewer to turn a blind eye to the many strands poking out of the story's tapestry. Landon is trying like hell to treat the situation seriously, and he shouldn't. I'm not saying this should lean into comedy or not present the threat seriously. But there's a version of this movie that wants to be a popcorn-munching thrill ride and there's a version of this that wants to be as deathly serious as Strangers On A Train, they're trying to happen at the same time, and Landon needed to pick a lane instead of trying to straddle them. That being said, if you can turn off your brain and just go with it, Drop is a lot of fun. It goes by in a breeze at barely over 90 minutes, never overstaying its welcome in any given moment. Meghann Fahy does a great job in the lead, balancing Violet's nervousness over the date, still being haunted by the trauma of her ex-husband, and then the panic over being blackmailed into becoming an assassin. Drop is the kind of movie that doesn't ask anything of you other than to sit down, shut up, strap in, and hold on. Sometimes, the brain wants art, and sometimes, the heart wants a roller coaster, and Drop is the latter. It's not Landon's best work, and it has its unpolished edges, but it does show Landon can step outside the "make an 80's comedy trope a horror movie" and be successful.