Movie houses are hurting economically these days – almost as much as they were hard hit during COVID. Streaming is pandemic more than ever as films are commonly made expressly for the smaller screen. But the home theater remains the quintessential date-night faux pas.
When At Z MovieZ screened Drop, the film options for dating adults were sorely limited. A Minecraft Movie, Captain America: Brave New World, Snow White, Sneaks, plus a slew of nail-biting horror flicks and gun-wielding action thrillers. Not the stuff of first dates or worth the babysitting budget plus dinner-and-a-movie expenditures.
What then is out there for adults to screen at Z MovieZ that isn’t all action all the time or awkwardly explicit sex scenery? Drop so adequately fits the bill, it’s no wonder it’s doing well with critics and audiences alike despite being a shockingly low-budget film with a relatively unknown cast set in Chicago, yet filmed in Ireland.
The precept improbably combines classic Hitchcockian suspense with Millenial/Gen Z technicity. The title Drop is a reference to the techmare gizmo-terrorist tool in the film comparable to AirDrop, a feature on the iPhone and Apple devices that allows you to share photos and documents with other nearby iToys without having been provided with those cell phone numbers.
Drop stars Meghann Fahy of White Lotus 2 fame and Brandon Sklenar of It Ends with Us, where he starred alongside the dynamic duelers Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Sklenar and director Christopher Landon, Michael Landon’s son and Jennifer Landon’s brother (Teeter on Yellowstone), left Scream 7 to direct Drop. Both Sklenar and Landon know from film set nightmare drama.
Drop opens with a flashback of Violet (Fahy) attempting to evade her violently abusive and gun wielding husband who is looking for his own end of us in front of their toddler son. After five years of über-intensive parental dedication and the social isolation of widowhood, she is persuaded to finally meet the man for whom she swiped right on a dating app. How bad can a first date be? Violet and Henry (Sklenar) soon discover just how disastrous as she begins to receive incessant “Digi Drops” directing her to accept and follow all instructions or her son and babysitting sister will be killed.
The film’s premise is reminiscent of Wes Craven’s Red Eye starring Cillian Murphy as the stranger on the plane, Rachel McAdam as the criss-crossed would be assassin enabler whose father (Brian Cox) is targeted by a gunman outside his home should she fail to cooperate. Drop, however, is actually based on two of the producers’ actual experience with an AirDropping stalker.
Producers Cameron Fuller and Sam Lerner, along with Sam’s girlfriend, were dining in a packed restaurant when she began to get drops of creepy Shrek memes. Much as in Drop, the dinner party at first enjoyed the challenge of sleuthing out the whodunnit. But, just as in the film, given that the never-ending drop dings disrupted their entire dinner, they became concerned. Believing they had identified the dropper, the group followed the suspect to the pool where they could isolate the AirDrop range. Reality being as strange as a screenplay- they were wrong! But a movie idea was born.
Drop premiered on March 9, 2025 at the SXSW (South by Southwest) Film Festival, a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s masterful 1959 thriller North by Northwest starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Landau, and James Mason. The modest $11 million Drop budget saw a profit within the first week of its theatrical release. Drop may not yet or ever be a sleeper but it’s proving to be more than the little film that couldn’t drop at Cannes.
The beguiling cast upstages the plot holes which drop throughout the plot line: How did the stalker plant cameras in the restaurant and how did he know where and when Violet and Henry would meet on their date? Maybe the meter reader bugged the house!?! Moreover, how long would any guy put up with her phone freak-outs and relentless disappearing acts?
Three words: Drop-dead gorgeousness – pun intended. The camera soft-focuses upon Fahy and Sklenar like The White Lotus director Mike White’s obsession with water. There’s a seductive vulnerability to both Violet and Henry that’s magnetic. Henry is persuaded by Violet’s authenticity (even when faced with her developing duplicity), and she is by his unwavering compassion – and courage.
The supporting cast is stellar. Jeffery Self as Matt, the overly-expansive neophyte waitron on his very first shift, is a scene stealer to watch for in future films. Reed Diamond is superlative as the forlorn ditched blind date. Ed Weeks, the frequent bump-in-the-bar encounter, renders suspicion with classic British understated skill. Yes, another nod to the grand master of suspense.
If you haven’t seen a Hitchcock flick by now, DROP what you’re doing and check out Rear Window. Then catch Drop in a theater near you or streaming once it drops on Peacock. Suspend your disbelief. Sit back and enjoy the wild ride. Second dates and subsequent screenings are made to revisit unanswered questions. Your date will thank me later!
