★★★★

A delectable premise finds maniacal delivery in Drop, a taut new thriller from Happy Death Day’s Christopher Landon. As penned by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, the film boasts the sort of idea so ripe for mining that it’s perplexing to think nobody has done so before. An AirDrop thriller for the iPhone era. Drop was, in fact, conceived only when the girlfriend of its executive producer, Sam Lerner, began receiving dodgy Shrek memes one night in a packed restaurant. It’s no huge leap to climb from crass to creepy and then on to criminal. In Landon’s hands, it’s splendidly scaled.

Meghann Fahy, best known for her turn in the second series of The White Lotus, leads as Violet, trauma therapist and single mum to young Toby, who is played by Irish TikTok export Jacob Robinson. A grisly past, teased in a stark opening sting, informs the almost obsessive bond between mother and son, but perhaps Violet is finally ready to move on. Her sister, Jen (Violett Beane), certainly thinks so. It’s with her encouragement – and an offer of free babysitting – that Violet accepts a date with winsome photographer Henry (It Ends With Us’ Brandon Sklenar). They’ve been texting for months and there’s clearly something there. It helps, of course, that he’s very good looking and innately sensitive.

He’s also late. It’s while waiting for Henry, held up on a job, in a swish, sky scraping bar, that Violet receives the first “drop”. This referring to the delivery of an image to Violet’s phone from a mystery source within fifty feet, aka the radius of their restaurant. What starts off in the realms of innocuous irritability – akin to an off-colour Shrek meme – soon ramps up, gifting the film an easy/queasy velocity. Any sign of a flagging in Landon’s pace is swiftly offset by the arrival of each new threatening message. Ultimately, Violet is compelled to murder Henry or watch her son and sister be killed.

With much of the film unfolding in the singular setting of Violet’s date, Landon recalls something of the Hitchcockian impetus. Certainly, Drop reminds of Rope or Rear Window in form and claustrophobic tension. Such has been knowingly referenced in the film’s art deco posters. While the simplicity of Drop’s device keeps things taut, the superfluity of Landon’s ensemble casts a wide culpability net, entwining the core thrill with an engrossing whodunnit mystery. Fahy is terrific here, both as Landon’s unwilling sleuth and muted scream queen, surveying all around her as would a pressure cog fit to burst. There’s an art to masking fear that proves all too close to lived experience when spectres of abuse come to the fore. In one look, Fahy says it all.

As befitting Landon’s signature verve, Drop’s horror inclinations come diverted through a rye ear for fun. Humour dances through the film, finding expression in cringe-inducing physical comedy and some killer one-liners: ‘my horoscope was right!’ This elevated refusal to take proceedings too seriously does well to circumnavigate severity, somewhat overcoming a flurry of the film’s less convincing – or, perhaps, more predictable – developments. That and a chic visual aesthetic that speaks sophistication in volumes.

It’s not so hard to envision the sequels that will freely spawn from Drop. Landon whittles well through his contemporary technologies toolbox to ramp up the paranoia in his thrills but there’s mileage more in the modern iPhone’s capacity to breach boundaries. These are troubling times for data security. It’s a boon for horror.

T.S.