@Courtesy of Universal Pictures
It is honestly a relief for our cinephile soul to see a movie that uses suspense as the primary means to create entertainment. In contemporary Hollywood, like many other genres, thrillers have unfortunately become more a matter of action, marvelous special effects, raging editing and so on, than creating the tense atmosphere, meaningful characters and the right plot story.
Christopher Landon had another idea about Drop, and we are totally grateful for that. His movie has a very basic concept at its core: Violet (Meghann Fahy) is a single mother who decides to go on a first date with Henry (Brandon Sklenar) in a luxurious restaurant. After a few minutes she starts receiving concerning messages on her phone, until she discovers that someone broke into her house and is threatening to kill her son unless she does what the mysterious blackmailer is asking…
The first fifteen minutes or so of Drop are the perfect beginning for a movie like this: the pace of the storytelling is fluent and relaxed, helping the audience enjoy the tone and connect with the main character. Landon doesn’t rush too fast into the thriller tension, on the contrary he prefers the story taking its time to switch into it little by little, unsettling moment after another. When it becomes clear that the beautiful restaurant, with its customers and employers, is going to be the principal setting of the story, Drop becomes a funny, elegant and quite efficiently elaborated whodunit thriller.
@Courtesy of Universal Pictures
The screenplay by Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Roach uses all the tricks usually needed in this kind of movie to put the involuntary heroine in difficult situations while she is trying to discover the blackmailer and save her boy. Needless to say, you need to accept the challenge that Drop throws at you, being a divertissement which requires patience, irony and the willingness to go through a rhythm of storytelling that doesn’t seem to belong anymore to contemporary Hollywood entertainment.
That said, the feature film works on many levels: Landon never goes over the top in order to please the viewers, creating that kind of cinematic tension that is entertaining without being hysterical. He also proves to be a good actors’ director: Meghann Fahy develops a quite believable “ordinary” character, giving Violet psychological and emotional depth.
On the other side of the couple, Brandon Sklenar is reliable about portraying another common good guys, definitely not a hero but a man who knows what’s right or wrong, which doesn’t mean being capable to take a stand and fight for justice or for saving the damsel in distress. The chemistry between the two main actors is there, especially because they have to play this weird, failing first date with just no romance, only suspense.
@Courtesy of Universal Pictures
As we wrote at the beginning of this review, it is refreshing from time to time to enjoy a thriller made by thinking about Alfred Hitchcok’s lesson. A few years ago Jaume Collet-Serra used the one-single-setting idea for entertaining thrillers like Non-Stop, The Shallows or The Commuter. Christopher Landon chooses to exploit the same formula and accomplishes the same kind of result: Drop is an intelligent movie that doesn’t try to achieve more than possible, talks about real people with real issues and is able to take the best possible advantage from the elegance of its setting.
The restaurant at the top of the skyscraper in Chicago is a beautifully crafted frame for this “mouse trap” produced by Platinum Dunes and Blumhouse. After the hilarious Scouts Guide to Zombie Apocalypse – probably still his best movie – and the interesting Happy Death Day, the director has shown again his skills and produced a juicy thriller that is totally worth its 100 minutes of fun and entertainment.
@Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Rate: B
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Here’s the trailer for Drop: