The latest from Blumhouse has an interesting premise, but fails to deliver on anything original.
When I first saw the trailer for Drop, I thought it had a chance to be a lot of fun. The idea was interesting enough, as it’s about a mysterious figure airdropping messages to a woman on a first date. A classic whodunit that feels like something that could actually happen in today’s day and age. There are moments where Drop is enjoyable to watch, don’t get me wrong. But the problem is those moments are few and far between.
Let’s dive into what works in Drop. First off, the initial suspense of who is sending the messages makes for a fun guessing game for the audience. There are obvious options and sleeper options, and I will say when the person is revealed… I did not see it coming. So well done there. While they don’t have great chemistry, the performances from Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar as Violet and Henry are still solid. Neither star that you might recognize from The White Lotus or one of the Yellowstone spinoff shows will absolutely blow you away, but they work for the script they were given. As a whole, Drop is entertaining, but it is ultimately forgettable and mindless entertainment.
One big mistake in Drop is that the messages begin coming to Violet’s phone almost immediately after she enters the restaurant where her first date is. I know the runtime is short, but it would have been nice to see her and Henry actually get into their date and build some chemistry before the airdrops begin. Instead, it’s awkward between them and her phone doesn’t stop buzzing and it becomes less believable that Henry would have sticked around with how rude she was from thee start of their date. And speaking of Henry, he’s portrayed WAY too nice while Violet is straight up acting like a crazy person and vanishing for minutes at a time and he’s just way okay with it.
Drop also suffers from a predictable script too. It doesn’t have to change cinema forever, but there are so many scenes you could predict what is going to wind up happening. That combined with one too many conveniences for our protagonists makes for a mindless, non-challenging watch. What is frustrating too is that there are some really good scenes that you can’t guess what’s going to happen, but they are overshadowed by the more obvious ones. And by the third act, it becomes extremely unrealistic and predictable, which adds to the disappointment.
Overall, Drop is a movie you will forget about a few days after you leave the theater. Any moments where tension builds up, you would get taken out of it by guessing what is going to happen. However, it is way funnier than you’d think, so that was a nice surprise. With all of this being said, don’t rush to the theaters for this one, as it might be better suited to see at home when it’s available to stream.