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A Dropped Ball on a Promising Premise

For a single-location thriller setting, a movie could do worse than a high-rise restaurant. It is claustrophobic, both in its sense of space and the subtle suggestion of danger and isolation at such an altitude. There’s an air of exclusivity and mystery as well to the character of such a staff and clientele. But without the right kind of eye-popping design or immediate drama, it could be a fairly dry place as well; and Christopher Landon’s Drop skirts in and out of effectively achieving these.
It is a film structured around a first date in the elite Palate restaurant and a bulk of the movie takes place in real-time. Meghann Fahy plays Violet, a widow and single-mother still traumatized by her ex-husband’s abusiveness and the circumstances around his death; and while meeting Henry (Brandon Sklenar) for the first time finds herself tormented by a series of ‘drops’ in her phone -frightening messages from an unknown figure watching her every move and dictating her actions whilst threatening her son with a masked killer at her home. She is required by the messenger to complete a series of tasks culminating in killing Henry and taking the fall, for a catalogue of evidence he has on the local mayor’s corruption.
Those digital drops are where the title comes from and not, more obviously, the frequently marketed set-piece of Violet hanging precariously from the window of the restaurant -a beat included likely just to better justify that title (I don’t know that ‘drop’ is all that popular a term for receiving messages and memes). There is something a little stunning to seeing real memes replicated in a movie like this -obviously with a few adjustments (the burning Elmo for instance, likely altered due to copyright). It’s so distinct an aspect of modern digital communication, yet there can be something disturbing about them, as this movie occasionally finds. Though after a time, it’s favoured method of relaying the threats is just to bluntly throw the messages into the shot with Violet -a choice that doesn’t convey quite the harrowing intimacy the film is going for.
As this is going on and the situation gets more and more urgent, Violet of course has to play natural to her date, and Fahy portrays fairly well that intense stress and desperation masked not terribly convincingly beneath pleasantries. She strikes a good balance of being off just enough to look like she’s not trying to be, to suggest that something is wrong without being able to outright say it -a position that recalls probably many women on uncomfortable or dangerous dates. And in addition to this, there is the need to figure out who is behind the trap covertly. It means that the camera is on Violet at just about all times, laser-focused on the nuances of her actions and responses -a heavy burden for Fahy, who manages well with it. Across the table from her, Sklenar is quite good too -in some ways a dream date in his looks, his earnest charm and humour; yet a figure who in spite of being the target inspires a certain element of suspicion himself, in addition to representing the risk of her failure and allowing for a little bit of tension in their interplay. Customarily of course, he would be a source of the strain, and its easy for a link to form between Violet’s previous experiences of abuse and what could be with this new unknown person. But the film does a lot to counter that impression -there are a couple moments where the date is obviously going poorly and Henry respectfully endeavours to back out only for Violet to have to improvise for the sake of her son’s life, which ironically renders a potential romance less acute. When the movie attempts to strike up something real between them, in discussing their mutual experiences with abusive relationships -an otherwise very good showcase for Fahy, it doesn’t quite translate as authentic sparks.
Apart from the visual texts, Landon works to make the filmmaking engaging in other ways, which sometimes carries the movie through some of its dimmer meridians of tension. Though some of the cutting is a bit frenetic (and noticeably so in the last scene after all the drama has subsided), he makes good use of its rhythms in contrasting the worlds of Violet’s horror and the mundaneness of her date -hostile sounds or images that are coupled with or revealed to have some trivial significance in the present, which she is often being pulled away from. There’s also some very good framing of Violet’s potential suspects, the person behind the threats needing to be someone in the restaurant, and both the handsome man sitting at a table alone and periodically looking at her as well as an oversharing overzealous waiter are marked by the editing in suspicious ways -turning up or saying something at harrowing beats. There are also some sharp visual techniques employed, particularly relating to where Violet is entirely in her own head-space with the trauma of what is going on. A lot of Dutch angles, a good split dioptre shot, and some disorienting effects as she moves through the restaurant.
The culmination of the night is nicely done, played with precision by the performers enough so that the predictable outcome is overshadowed a tad, including that aforementioned set-piece. But this and the film's final resolution are pretty underwhelming, even with a couple nifty devices (like a barrel-role camera movement). It is an anti-climax that leaves the restaurant prison behind, and in spite of Landon's efforts to keep the stakes high, the primary threat being neutralized he is unable to maintain that cloistered urgency, and what proceeds is about the dimmest variation of its kind of action climax as you can get, complete with a typical joke line as tension release to end on.
There is some real intrigue and craft to Drop, but it is not the best version of itself. Landon’s specialty has been comedy-horror -he’s the guy behind the Happy Death Day movies and Freaky, while Drop is much more of a straight-laced thriller and there is the sense of this film being a conscious challenge for him. It is also, unlike his last four movies, not one he has written himself. And as a result, though he does some apt work on the visual side especially, the actual narrative and emotional needs feels at a distance and the lapses of urgency and repetition stand out more. Some curious beats of digital torture aren’t enough.

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