Wining and dining with someone stalked by a killer. Better make a reservation.
From what I have been seeing lately, Christopher Landon seems to be having a better connection with female leads in thrillers than he’s had with David Harbour playing a Harpo Marx-type ghost in “We Have a Ghost.” Now that film was a disappointment.
In the “Happy Death Day” movies, he made Jessica Rothe the star of his horror comedy version of “Groundhog Day.” In “Freaky,” he used Kathryn Newton as a teenage girl swapping bodies with a serial killer. And he was one of the writers of the Valentine’s Day horror film “Heart Eyes” with two people being mistaken for a couple by a killer. And now, his new movie “Drop” has Meghann Fahy on a date that requires her to be threatened by evil messages via AirDrop. Hence the title: “Drop.” Now, this director is entering Hitchcock territory, and he delivers the goods here.
Fahy has the look of a younger Leslie Mann as Violet, a single Chicago mother with a son Toby (Jacob Robinson), who is struggling to get over her abusive relationship, but agrees to go on a date with a photographer named Henry (Brendan Sklenar from “It Ends With Us”), via one of those dating apps. The date takes place at a lavish restaurant in the city (actually, it was filmed in Ireland, and not in Canada), and the dimmed lights and tone would make their first date worthy of a chick flick. Instead, the story transitions into a Hitchcock thriller with a “Die Hard” reminder, when the evil AirDrop messages stalk Violet and threaten her family. It’s funny, because I think I reviewed a formula like that in “Carry On,” and another building thriller in “Cleaner,” and yet, I enjoyed both movies on respective terms.
It would be obvious that her date would wonder about her behavior, considering how she looks around the restaurant, lies about losing her watch, and anything she has to try to do to follow her stalker’s orders. And according to the trailers, this villain wants her to murder her date.
There are many “Clue” suspects in the restaurant, including the 50s something bachelor Richard (Reed Diamond), the eccentric waiter Matt (Jeffrey Self), and a guy she keeps bumping into like Samantha and Darren in the first episode of “Bewitched.” So any one of them could be texting her, and that’s when the guessing begins.
Yes, I did mean that Landon has a good connection with main heroines, because he allows them to be smart and flexible when the time comes to be so. He also allows the actresses to be having fun with whatever genre his entries engage them in. Fahy, who was weak in her last film “The Unbreakable Boy,” sparks the right notes of fear and stress, and Skelnar is able to keep his charms within certain dating genres. And the suspects in the film have their moments that have us guessing on who is texting the main heroine.
“Drop” doesn’t take the kind of jump that “Heart Eyes” did within horror romcoms, but it does keep us at the edge of our seats and acknowledging the challenges in a more complicated sense than what was displayed in the action thriller “The Amateur.” And I saw both movies two days in a row. In fact, it’s usually quite intriguing when a villain texts someone and has their victims by the balls. It’s also challenging to see how they can eventually thrive against them, and this is one of those cases when you can have fun guessing the outcome.
There’s a lot of energy, a strong female lead, and some good intentions regarding domestic abuse, and all of which is placed under 90 minutes. That’s plenty of time to see how these text messages deliver. OMG, LOL, and WTF, all rolled in one.
