‘Drop’ Is a Hitchcock Thriller with a Cell Phone

Paranoia reigns in Christopher Landon's small-scale, fleet-footed film.

It’s sometimes difficult to invoke Alfred Hitchcock’s works as a basis for comparison because they imply a qualitative similarity. But the Master of Suspense left a long lineage that remains with us today because of how he could wring grand paranoia out of casual scenarios. That tradition appears in Christopher Landon’s exciting new thriller Drop, which uses a wireless ad hoc service like AirDrop (but not AirDrop! That belongs to Apple and would never be used for nefarious purposes!) to tell a taut tale coupled with the thoughtful subtext of a domestic abuse survivor seeing how deep her trust issues go.

Violet (Meghann Fahy) is going on her first date in five years. She devoted herself to raising her young son Toby (Jacob Robinson) but also stayed away from men as her deceased ex-husband was a violent and abusive brute. Picking up her courage with the help of her sister Jen (Violett Beane), who agrees to babysit Toby, Violet heads out to a fancy high-rise restaurant to meet Henry (Brandon Sklenar), a photographer working for the mayor who knows Violet’s history and appears incredibly understanding that this date is a big step for her. The date gets off to a good start until Violet starts receiving nefarious “DigiDrop” messages from an unknown person nearby. This person has an assassin inside Violet’s house (which she can see via her indoor security app) and gives Violet a simple direction: kill your date or my gunman kills your son. Forced to relive the abusive dynamic she tried so hard to escape, Violet must find a way to save both Toby and Henry as well as discover who in the restaurant is pulling the strings.

Meghann Fahy as Violet in Drop | Image via Universal Pictures