The wave of recent Blumhouse original films over the past few years has had significantly more misses than hits. There’s their recent smash cultural phenomenon M3GAN (2023), and the American remake of Speak No Evil (2024) was surprisingly pretty alright, but their duds — 2024’s Night Swim and Imaginary especially — miss the mark in nearly every aspect. Luckily, Christopher Landon’s new film Drop (2025) can be counted in the win column.
Drop blends its high-tech concept with deeper thriller roots from classic thrillers like Red Eye (2005) and crafts what I would describe as the perfect three-star thriller: a little silly and has some gaps in its logic but is lean, mean, and sets itself up by the end of its 90 minutes as a real crowd pleaser.
The film sets us up with our lead, Violet (Meghann Fahy), who is a victim of serious abuse from her ex-husband Blake (Michael Shea). Now widowed, Violet pursues a career in helping other victims of abuse. She decides to go on her first date in years with Henry (Brandon Sklenar) at a fancy local restaurant while leaving her sister, Jen (Violett Beane), to care for her son Toby (Jacob Robinson). The date starts well with Violet and Henry hitting it off. That is until she starts getting mysterious drop messages on her phone instructing her on what to do while threatening the lives of her date, sister, and Toby.
The core reason for Drop’s efficacy isn’t just because of its interesting concept but due to its stylization and blend of different genre ideas. The film itself plainly presents the concept of the mysterious dropper, with Violet trying every trick in the book to notify someone, whether writing on a twenty-dollar bill or contacting the authorities through a kiosk. But the film also has a Whodunit element of trying to figure out which restaurantgoer is secretly the dropper. The film lays it all out incredibly well, setting up Violet and Henry’s waiter Matt (Jeffery Self), the bartender Cara (Gabrielle Ryan), struggling dater Richard (Reed Diamond), Phil (Ed Weeks), Connor (Travis Nelson), and Diane (Fiona Browne) all as potential suspects without ever making the answer too obvious. I was surprised when my initial guess of the dropper’s identity was dead wrong.
The movie also doesn’t let up with its cinematography and editing to keep the audience on their toes, with a lot of fancy text being shown on-screen while we watch a scene. The film also utilizes a lot of tracking and Hitchcock-like wide high angle and aerial shots, using a surprisingly great amount of creativity despite the majority of the film’s run time taking place in the restaurant. From a direction standpoint, Drop is easily Landon’s best effort thus far.
Still, the film isn’t without qualms holding it back from being a truly great thriller. Landon himself is no stranger to inserting as much comedy as there is horror in his features (see his previous Blumhouse collaborations Happy Death Day [2017], and Freaky [2020]), but what added to the enjoyment of those films feels surprisingly uneven here. It isn’t that the film is unfunny, as it does have some decent laughs here and there, mostly from Matt being the main comedic relief. But the comedy never feels truly connected to the film’s ethos as it did with Landon’s previous features. It comes across with more misses than hits this time around, possibly because the film is more thriller-oriented than straight-up horror.
Also, the concept of the film (which, yes, is an incredibly intriguing setup) is largely forgotten after the initial reveal that the dropper knows where Violet’s home is and could send the message to have them killed at any moment. The airdrop memes are dropped (no pun intended) in favor of regular-worded messages, which can make you think the film could’ve been told entirely from regular text messages instead of airdrops.
Drop is, all around, another solid venture for Landon, showing he’s still very skilled with working inside of genre filmmaking. Drop has all the thrills, chills, and satisfying moments that anyone would want out of a slick 90-minute thriller like this, but it’s also got a great big sweetness at its center with Fahy and Shea’s connection in the face of unparalleled peril.
Review Courtesy of Joshua Mbonu
Feature Image Credit to Universal and Blumhouse Studios via Variety