“Drop” 2025
When the trailer, pardon the pun, “dropped,” it was hard to imagine the movie ultimately being anything but a hard R. It had all the elements, right? Bloodied faces, strangers being where strangers aren’t meant to be, the heroine dangling literally by threads from a skyscraper, paranoia and the promise of up-close violence.
The movie wastes no time getting to business as soon as it opens, with an intense scene that quickly sets the table. We are introduced to Violet, a single mom who has finally caved and decided it’s time to enter the dating scene played by Megan Fahy, her adorable son and her sister Jen, who happily agrees to babysit.
The setup is clean and efficient. Violet is going to dinner to finally meet her internet crush. But things don’t quite go as planned. Using drop messages, someone in the restaurant quickly begins playing with Violet’s head, at first innocently, then dangerously.
There’s a lot going on. Violet’s nerves and insecurities, the constant stress as a parent of allowing yourself to take care of yourself for a change, even though that’s the last thing good parents often think to do. Then there’s her date, running late. Is he going to show up? Did she get catfished?
When she finally meets Henry, played by Brandon Sklenar with the accent and likability of a young Colin Ferrell, the paranoia begins ratcheting up. At first Violet lets Henry in on what is happening with the messages that keep bombarding her phone.
Henry being a good guy wants to help her. But can she trust him and is she allowed to?
What follows next is a swift game of cat and mouse. “Drop,” extremely well directed by Christopher Landon, someone more known for his writing credits than his directing chops, makes the most of the limited characters and shrewdly minimized sets. The driving force of plot and action should be problems. In this the film delivers, as they keep piling up.
Violet needs to figure out who is messaging her, why and how to get out of a very perilous situation.
I admired the fact that for a movie that maintains a restrained running time gets so many punches in for so little time. And this could be a welcome trend as “Black Bag” kept the same approach.
While not as artfully done as Steve Soderberg’s movie, “Drop” has nothing to apologize for. It is a good popcorn flick that gets the job done and unlike a lot of fare out there, actually manages to stick the landing.
⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Leave a Reply