Drop

Last night I went to a Thursday preview of Drop because I thought the premise looked intriguing.  I went in with very few expectations and I found it entertaining enough.  Violet (Meghann Fahy) is a single mother who is finally ready to go on a date after surviving an abusive marriage.  She meets Henry (Brandon Sklenar), a handsome and charming man with whom she has been communicating on a dating app for three months, at an upscale restaurant while her sister Jen (Violett Beane) watches her young son Toby (Jacob Robinson) at her house.  Violet is nervous but soon becomes annoyed when she receives several AirDrops from someone nearby.  She and Henry attempt to discover which of the restaurant's patrons is sending them but the messages become increasingly threatening until she is forced to follow a series of instructions in order to prevent her son, who has been taken hostage, from being killed.  When she is told to kill Henry by poisoning his drink, she becomes desperate to save both him and her son from the anonymous caller.  There are some great twists and turns with a few exciting action sequences in the third act but it drags in the second act because, in my opinion, the mystery is belabored for longer than it should be and I found the big reveal to be a bit anticlimactic.  You must also suspend your disbelief a lot (why would someone stay on a date with a woman who is continually staring at her phone and frequently leaving to use the restroom and why wouldn't you just turn AirDrop off after the first innocuous message?).  However, I really liked the stylized production design (the restaurant is seriously cool), the disorienting camera angles that emphasize Violet's claustrophobia, and all of the visual effects that integrate what is happening on Violet's phone (especially the way her home camera feed is portrayed in a tension-filled scene).  I also really enjoyed Fahy's performance because she very effectively communicates Violet's terror (there are many close-up shots on her face) and Jeffery Self is hilarious as an aspiring comedian working as a waiter.  This is definitely not a great movie but I enjoyed it enough to recommend it for a fun night out but nothing more.