Drop's phone-based thrills are a serviceable use of screen time

In Drop, public phone use isn’t just rude—it’s deadly. Directed by Christopher Landon, the filmmaker behind the similarly high-concept slashers Happy Death Day and Freaky, Drop is a smaller-scale Hitchcockian thriller overwhelmed by style. Part of that is baked in. The single-location thriller follows in the tradition of Phone Booth and Red Eye, playing on the restrictions of its phone-focused premise in hopes of turning them into a strength. Drop calls in help from various sources, relying on digital effects, whirlybird cinematography, and broad humor to fill out its runtime. The result is a bit like being in an over-populated group chat—sometimes overwhelming to look at, but every now and then something killer comes through.

In a society hedging toward a self-imposed surveillance state, where every doorbell is a Ring cam and every phone a security terminal, monitoring one’s home from afar has become the norm. That proves to be a problem for The White Lotus‘ Meghann Fahy, who plays Violet, a widowed single mom re-entering the dating scene years after the violent death of her abusive ex. Arriving at the vertigo-inducing circular restaurant atop a Chicago skyscraper, she can’t even enjoy her first date without ensuring her five-year-old makes it to bedtime via her nanny cam feed. The feed tempts her with a view of every room in the house when she should be focusing on her Tinder date, Henry (Brandon Sklenar), an accommodating-to-a-fault photographer. All this extra screentime leaves her open for trolling, and she begins receiving mysterious and increasingly threatening AirDrops (or “digiDrops,” in the film’s parlance) from someone nearby—someone in the restaurant.

The first question one has to address when making a high-concept movie like Drop is why the heroine doesn’t simply turn AirDrop off when she gets the Dropper’s first message. Working off a script by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, Landon swipes those questions away and instead makes the game about keeping her date at the table. For a brief period, the mystery resembles a slight who-dropped-it as Violet and Henry investigate, searching the eatery for suspects. But the cyberbullying soon gives way to something more sinister: The Dropper instructs Violet to kill her date, or her son dies. To prove this isn’t some TikTok-challenge-inspired hoax, a ski-masked man with a gun appears on Violet’s security feed, waiting at her house to threaten her unsuspecting son and sister.

In Landon’s energetic hands, what these systems mean is less important than the pulpy thrills they can generate. Tethered to Fahy’s steadfast portrayal of her character’s trauma, the tormentor’s texts become overwhelming, inspiring the visual motif of massive on-screen chyrons showing the viewer what Violet sees on her phone. These stylistic flourishes sometimes generate potent images, such as when Violet hides in the bathroom to check her home’s cameras. The various windows of her feed replace the walls around her, imprisoning her in images of so-called security. Other gimmicks wear out their welcome, overcompensating for the film’s single setting. The text overlays offer a window into Violet’s inner turmoil, but the technique plateaus quickly and remains present throughout the runtime. 

Aside from the effect-driven gambles, Drop also spins Violet’s harrowing past into fodder for tension. Though his film opens on a scene of intense domestic abuse, Landon and his writers don’t have much to say about Violet’s PTSD, nor does Drop want its audience to engage with it too deeply. It’s simply used as a foundation for suspense and comedy. Like the director’s superior Happy Death Day movies, Drop bounces broad humor and big performances off of Fahy’s heavily guarded commitment. The comedy comes fast and frequently, particularly from the waitstaff trying to pin down what’s going on with Table Nine. Landon strikes a nice balance between Violet’s PTSD-driven suspicions and the silliness of Matt (Jeffrey Self), a Chicago improviser moonlighting as a server. Like last year’s Smile 2, the central performance serves to anchor any narrative clumsiness or tonal clashes to the tension. Landon finds a middle ground here, letting the obnoxious waiter routine both relieve and exacerbate Fahy’s escalating fear.

But Landon brings a heavy hand to everything in the movie, when it could all use a lighter touch. Aside from its treatment of Violet’s backstory, Drop wants so badly to be a loose thrill ride that the action-packed third act strips her journey of any meaningful resonance and deflates the suspense that gave the narrative its early charge. Relying too much on bombast and shaky effects that diminish the tension, the movie isn’t confident enough to see its premise all the way through. At its best, though, Drop updates the small-scale, high-concept suspense that Hollywood has had on airplane mode for too long.

Director: Christopher Landon
Writer: Jillian Jacobs, Chris Roach
Starring: Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Violett Beane, Jacob Robinson, Reed Diamond, Ben Pelletier, Gabrielle Ryan, Jeffery Self, Ed Weeks, Travis Nelson
Release Date: April 11, 2025