Review: DROP

After a prologue of a woman, Violet, facing an extreme DV situation, we cut to her more ordered and stable life years on. She has decided to brave leaving the house and try the dating scene again. The guy seems perfect, hunky but self-effacing. The restaurant is impossibly swanky with dizzy views of the city from its skyscraper setting. Violet's early but her date is keeping her updated with messages and apologies for lateness. An aging suit mistakes her for his blind date and after laughing about it they clink glasses as fellow explorers of later stage romance search. 

When the guy, Henry, arrives the chemistry is immediate. Then during the small talk, she gets a drop on her phone, a challenge. She ignores it and all the subsequent ones until the sender shows her his hack of her home security system with a balaclava-ed intruder waving a gun in the living room. What do they want? Henry. Dead. Nope, they already thought of the police or her telling Henry. They can see and hear her. She has to kill Henry with a phial of something lethal, planted in the towel dispenser in the loo. She has to think fast and well.

Christopher Landon who has already proved himself a strong director in the thriller and horror corner for the Happy Death Day films and the clever Freaky, gives us a sprightly, Hitchcockian story of invention against threat. This does not bear very close examination, once you take the setups and parade of tension releases along the way, the overall scheme just won't work. But that's situation normal for the genre.

It's also clouded and very pleawsantly by the sheer chemistry between the two leads played by Meghann Fahy and Brendon Sklenar whose interplay and individual actions in the busy setting take our minds well away from the plot holes. The camera is ready to move on call but also assuages us with static setups we need for character. The drops are delivered on screen as large font angled as through projected on to the walls. At one point there is a patchwork of Violet's home security cameras cast around her. These are like freeze frames of her concentrated attention and augment the more typical phone screenshots with a lot more urgency. In showing this kind of flair, we are invited into Violet's anxiety, knowing that, for all the brightness and scale of the notifications they are being read only by her. Add the vertigo of the window-side table and you've got some nice queasy moments of dread.

There's not much more to say about this Blumhouse produciton; it really does what it says on the tin. However, at a time when new genre tales are coming out with bloated running times, this ninety-five minute pacer, wins its slot.

VIewing notes: currently available for hire through Prime