First dates are nerve-wracking enough. Going on a first date while an unnamed, unseen troll pings you personal memes that escalate from annoying to homicidal? Blood-chilling. From director Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day) comes Drop, a mystery-thriller starring Meghann Fahy (White Lotus S3) and Brandon Sklenar (It Ends with Us).
When widowed mother Violet (Meghann Fahy) finally takes the plunge and steps out on her first date in years, she starts receiving innocuous but annoying media drops on her phone. Things begin to take a turn for the nightmarish as the pesky drops turn into threats to her son’s life. She is directed to kill her date (Brandon Sklenar) or risk losing her son. Time is ticking as she races to unveil the tormentor hiding in plain sight at the restaurant her date is taking place.
The idea for the film came from real life circumstances when producer Cameron Fuller and executive producer were on an overseas vacation. “We’re at a beautiful dinner and we start receiving drops from someone in the restaurant,” Fuller says. “Over the course of the meal, they are getting progressively scarier. By the end, we thought we had figured out who it was, but we were never able to confirm it. That was the scariest part. We never knew who the sender of these drops was. And then we said, ‘maybe this should be a movie.’”
Director Christopher Landon was excited to work with the material and Jason Blum, having helmed many of Blumhouse’s hits like Freaky and Happy Death Day. “I think the reason I’ve had such a lasting relationship with Blumhouse, and specifically Jason, is the amount of creative freedom they give their filmmakers,” Landon says. “If you can make your movie within a certain budget parameter, you have control. It is an empowering situation, and that is why a lot of filmmakers keep going back.”
Landon also felt like he had a personal connection to the film, which deals with abuse and trauma. “I’ve had people very close to me who have been victims of abuse, specifically domestic abuse,” says Landon. “This was very personal to me, and something I wanted to handle delicately. But I also wanted to show that there is a path for people, a way out.”
Drop delivers thrills to Philippine theaters starting April 9.
