Drop movie review (2025) | Little White Lies

Drop review – a first date with no chemistry

08 Apr 2025 / Released: 11 Apr 2025

Words by Hannah Strong

Directed by Christopher Landon

Starring Brandon Sklenar and Meghann Fahy

A woman wearing a red velvet blazer, standing in a dimly lit room holding a glass.
A woman wearing a red velvet blazer, standing in a dimly lit room holding a glass.
3

Anticipation.

How can you make AirDropping memes scary?

3

Enjoyment.

...Turns out you can't.

2

In Retrospect.

GSOH? GTFO.

A domes­tic abuse sur­vivor finds her­self on the first date from hell in Christo­pher Lan­don’s phone-based thriller.

Ever since smart­phones became a part of every­day life film­mak­ers have strug­gled to make them feel cin­e­mat­ic – recent­ly Robert Eggers joked he would nev­er make a mod­ern film sim­ply because the idea of shoot­ing a phone filled him with so much dis­gust. Christo­pher Lan­don, of Hap­py Death Day 2 U and Freaky fame, takes a dif­fer­ent approach, embrac­ing our always online real­i­ty as depict­ed in Jil­lian Jacobs’ and Chris Roach’s script for Drop. Sur­veil­lance cam­era footage is super­im­posed onto the walls of a toi­let cubi­cle; the con­tent of text mes­sages flash­es on-screen in bold let­ters. Our hero­ine Vio­let (Meghann Fahy) can­not escape the inter­net, just as she can’t escape the spec­tre of her abu­sive ex-hus­band, despite being phys­i­cal­ly free from his vio­lent outbursts.

Despite the feel­ing of being watched, Vio­let con­quers her anx­i­ety enough to leave her young son Toby (Jacob Robin­son) with her sis­ter Jen (Vio­lett Beane) for the evening so she can get back in the prover­bial sad­dle and final­ly go on a first date with Hen­ry (Bran­don Skle­nar). Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Vio­let, when she arrives at upscale Chica­go eatery Palate’, she starts to receive increas­ing­ly men­ac­ing memes through the Blue­tooth drop fea­ture on her phone. It’s revealed that an unknown par­ty is hold­ing her son and sis­ter hostage and will kill them unless Vio­let assas­si­nates Henry.

Not keen on that idea, Vio­let attempts to get out of the sit­u­a­tion with­out arous­ing the sus­pi­cion of her remark­ably patient date, but her all-see­ing ene­my always seems one step ahead, mim­ic­k­ing the inescapable pres­ence of her ex. A game of cat and mouse devel­ops as Vio­let attempts to stall, ensure her family’s safe­ty, and work out which of her fel­low restau­rant patrons is tor­ment­ing her. Fahy deliv­ers a sym­pa­thet­ic enough turn as Vio­let, par­tic­u­lar­ly along­side the charis­mat­ic Skle­nar as Hen­ry; the rest of the cast is round­ed-out by exag­ger­at­ed stereo­types, includ­ing a cringe-induc­ing over­ly-famil­iar wait­er, a restau­rant sleezy pianist and a seem­ing­ly harm­less old­er gen­tle­man. Exag­ger­at­ed mis­di­rec­tions do noth­ing to pre­vent Drops even­tu­al reveal from feel­ing obvi­ous and con­trived, to the extent that even a svelte 90 minute run­time starts to feel like a stretch. Per­haps it’s the uncin­e­mat­ic real­i­ty of a smart­phone-based thriller – more like­ly it’s a lack of ambition.

The unin­spired nature of Drop speaks to a wider prob­lem with Blum­house, the hor­ror pow­er play­er who churn out low-bud­get flicks at an impres­sive rate (Drop is their third of a sched­uled six releas­es this year) which usu­al­ly receive mid­dling reviews but rack up impres­sive box office returns. Qual­i­ty often feels like an after­thought, and in Drop this feels most evi­dent in the weak script and flat cin­e­matog­ra­phy. There’s an inter­change­able feel­ing to the recent Blum­house slate which is per­haps part of their suc­cess: audi­ences show up for the films because they know what to expect. An intrigu­ing premise; a few scares; some rel­a­tive­ly inof­fen­sive humour, and noth­ing too men­tal­ly tax­ing, if you’re pre­pared to switch your brain off and not dis­sect the ludi­crous plot. It’s the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of fast food – cheap, easy, uncon­tro­ver­sial, dis­pos­able and read­i­ly avail­able. A cou­ple of hours after digest­ing, you might for­get you’ve eat­en in the first place.

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