DROP is truly remarkable for being such a well-crafted thriller until suddenly it’s not. And in such a way that all the good that comes before, of which there is much, self-destructs so thoroughly that it becomes not just irksome but also insulting. And this is a shame for everyone involved.
Before we get to the denouement that implodes the film into a fatal singularity from which nothing can escape, we have a nicely rendered bit of suspense that plays directly into the paranoia of knowing that the very tech that fuels modern life, and the illusion of security it gives us, in fact represents a total invasion of any sort of privacy when it is turned on its owners. Grafting that onto the terrors of a first date with a dash of overcoming domestic abuse held possibilities, many of which were realized before everything tipped over the event horizon and into the black hole of bad choices.
Our heroine is Violet (Meghann Fahy), an empathetic therapist specializing in domestic abuse survivors. She spends her days in video calls to patients assuring them of their self worth while struggling with her own dark secret and doting on her impossibly cute four-year-old, Toby (Jacob Robinson). Three years after her husband’s death, she is finally ready to get out there again after meeting Henry (Brandon Sklenar) online and virtually chatting fora few months. They meet up at a posh restaurant crowning one of Chicago’s skyscrapers, and it would have been a magical evening except for the messages Violet keeps getting via a phone app called, wait for it, Drop. Unless she follows instructions, and quickly, bad things will happen to her son, and and her sister (Violett Beane) who is babysitting, and the security cameras Violet has watching her home show the stealth intruder ready to carry out the threat.
The instructions include killing Henry, who, in a smart move by the filmmakers,is proven over and over again to be the last good guy out there in the dating market. Talk about heartbreaking decisions. As the plot thickens, Violet desperately tries to outwit an opponent who seems omniscient with ploys that are all the more admirable for being concocted on the fly and under extreme duress. As cat-and-mouse games go, this one plays out with taut suspense. The requisite element of having everyone, include Henry, suspect that Violet is unstable adds to the tension, and there is just the right amount of misdirection about who is behind all this, and piquant comic relief from Matt (Jeffery Self), the waiter with iffy flair and bad timing.
Director Christopher Landon relies on more than just the fine performances from his actors, though special attention must be paid to Skelnar’s craft in making a Boy Scout into a layered character. Landon’s style is sleek and to the point. He uses lighting to amplify POV and takes the phone texts that arrive thick and fast on Violet’s phone into higher realm by plunking them onto the screen with an expressionist elan and an ominous crescendo at exactly the correct volume. Terseness only adds to the tension as each arrives with taunts and threats and impossible orders.
So far, so good, and if you want to preserve your experience as a good one, leave just as the culprit is revealed. After that, it becomes A tragedy of errors, with each filmic choice even more heinously absurd than the last. The blithe disregard for the physiology of gunshot wounds, or even a token semblance of credulity takes over in favor of patently unhinged melodrama and a dash of, I’m not kidding, HOME ALONE. Without the charm or laughs. Intentional laughs, anyway.
DROP prompts one to ponder how these things happen. And to wonder where a script doctor is when one is most needed.
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