Warning: Spoilers follow for DropChristopher Landon may not have been able to put his creative fingerprints on Scream 7, but he certainly continues his impressive directorial run with Drop, a technology-inspired fresh spin on the whodunit thriller that also serves as a commentary on the nerves and danger surrounding first dates. Landon’s best efforts have involved clever callbacks to films that likely inspired his own work, from Happy Death Day to Freaky. He’s a filmmaker who makes no secret of his inspirations, but with every homage, there is personal growth in him as a storyteller, making him one of the more unique genre voices working today.
Once it gets going, Drop is a nail-biter of a thriller, mixing in the escalating tension of Wes Craven’s Red Eye while also showcasing some of the awkwardness that goes along with a first date. Except the first date in Drop is complicated by the fact that one of the parties is mysteriously being stalked during the occasion and is being asked to do the unthinkable.
What Happens in ‘Drop’?
Drop focuses on a widowed mother named Violet (Meghann Fahy), a woman the audience learns early on dealt with abuse from her ex-husband that escalated to a night of violence, which reached a deadly end. It has been years since Violet has gone on a date as she has focused on her personal healing and raising her young son, Toby (Jacob Robinson). After much time alone, Violet has been talking with a man named Henry (Brandon Sklenar) on a dating app and, after three months of communication, they have agreed to go on a first date.
Henry notifies Violet that he will be late and, in the meantime, she has encounters with various people at the restaurant, from the hostess who takes her coat to Cara (Gabrielle Ryan Spring), a kind bartender, and various men who make their presence known to Violet. There’s Phil (Ed Weeks), a cocky piano player; Connor (Travis Nelson), a patron constantly on his phone; andRichard (Reed Diamond), a very awkward gentleman who is at the restaurant waiting for a blind date. While waiting, Violet receives her first digidrop, a play on the AirDrop feature on the iPhone that allows people to share videos and photos with others within close proximity. The first drop indicates to Violet that someone wants to play a game.
Let the Games Begin
Henry finally arrives at the restaurant, and Violet is relieved to find out he looks just like his pictures, and he’s just as charming as he looks. Henry is a photographer and is also aware of Violet’s situation, being a widow and having a young son. Everything is running smoothly, but Violet still keeps getting relentless drops, something Henry initially tries to help her with by narrowing down who could be sending them in the restaurant to her phone.
As they’re trying to figure out this mystery and Violet ignores one too many of them, she gets a message to check her security cameras at home, and she’s terrified to discover there is a masked figure in her house, unbeknownst to her sister and young son. Whenever Violet is about to make a move to ask for help or make this threat known, it’s clear that this person can see and hear her every move, making them one step ahead of Violet at all times. She’s instructed to tell no one about what’s going on, or her son and her sister will be killed. As to why this unknown person is terrorizing Violet, he wants to perform one deadly task: murder her date.
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Through a series of tasks that Violet has to perform, it’s clear that some of this has to do with her date, Henry. She’s asked to retrieve the SD card from his camera, smash it, and flush it down the toilet. As Violet has to think of clever ways to distract Henry, she looks through the camera and sees a series of photos that show documents revealing large sums of money being exchanged in some fashion, although not much of it makes sense to Violet at the time.
Since she’s also instructed to keep Henry at the table and not allow him to leave, Violet has to have a lot of conversation with Henry, allowing the audience to learn that one of the people Henry has been taking pictures for is the mayor, a subject that clearly puts Henry in a very distant mood when it’s brought up. After doing what she can to avoid having to kill her date, Violet gets to a point where she relents and orders two shots of tequila for the pair, believing she has to lace his with the poison that she was led to by her tormentor in the restaurant’s bathroom.
Who’s Behind the Threats?
After a series of red herrings, Violet ultimately spots her tormentor as Richard, the awkward man that she met at the bar earlier, who was seemingly on a blind date. It’s learned that he set up everything to have the pair sit at a specific table so he could observe them and also be located in a specific area of the restaurant himself, so that his eyes are always on the pair.
As it turns out, Henry stumbled upon evidence involving the mayor being a part of an embezzlement scheme and, as Richard puts it, “he’s a rat” that could expose it. They’d already wiped the pictures from the main server that Henry had backed them up on, and they now just needed to get rid of his SD card and Henry himself, because he’s soon to meet with the FBI to turn over the evidence. To not do the dirty work on their own, they learned a lot about Violet’s past when their date was going to finally become official. They learned about Violet’s issues with her ex-husband and how it was believed that she murdered him following an act of violence, although it’s revealed that the husband ultimately killed himself as the police were closing in and Violet was too paralyzed by fear.
For Richard, it’s all a matter of perception. It would be easier to put this on the widow with past abuse issues who decided to lose it on her new date because of her past PTSD, making headlines essentially read “crazy widow strikes again.” Richard is in place at the restaurant to direct Violet, while he’s just a phone call away with the masked man at her home, who is waiting for the word that the murder of Henry is done or that he will have to move ahead and kill Violet’s son and her sister.
What Is the Deeper Meaning of ‘Drop’?
Even though Drop is a fun thriller with plenty of exhilarating moments that work best when one suspends their disbelief, the film’s central theme is about finding your strength in a crisis. Through flashbacks, the audience is teased with the altercation between Violet and her ex and how these events eventually progressed. It looks like Violet was the one who killed her ex to protect her son, but she reveals in a touching moment with Henry, during her current moment of torment, that she felt like she was a bad mother because she didn’t take action to protect her son when it counted. She was so paralyzed by fear that she couldn’t act when it counted. She is plagued by guilt because of this and believes it discredits her value as her mom.
However, when it counted this time, Violet took action. Instead of poisoning her date, she does a bit of sleight of hand and poisons Richard’s recently delivered dessert, and, after things break into complete chaos at the restaurant, Violet has to make her way home to stop the masked man who was in place to kill her son and sister. Once the action moves from the restaurant to the home during the final moments of the film, Violet has found the strength to move heaven and Earth to protect the people she cares about.
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Violet goes through the physical paces with her masked assailant, with much of the brutality calling back to the violence the audience saw her endure during the flashback scenes. Even though the odds are against her, Violet stands up and fights back with everything she has in her, although she is given a clever assist from her son that involves a toy car and a fun game they play early in the film between mother and son. Throwing in one last twist, while Violet is on a Zoom work call as a therapist when the movie begins, a man comes to her home letting her know that he’s just there to check her fuse boxes and this very man turns out to be the masked figure in her home, placed there by Richard.
By the end, Violet has not only found her strength, but she has also found a man worthy of her time and affection, as Henry is just as charming and sincere as he’s meant to come off. Following the chaos of their first date from hell, it ends with the pair still interested in being in each other’s lives but agreeing that their next date should be as boring as possible. Who could blame them after that kind of ordeal? Drop is now playing in theaters nationwide.
