Christoper Landon, who once blessed an insufficiently appreciative world1 with Happy Death Day, takes a walk on the thriller side with (near-)chamber thriller Drop.
Violet (Meghann Fahy) is still emotionally bruised from a marriage that ended badly enough to merit a grim, gun-brandishing cold open. She’s a therapist who specializes in counseling other abuse survivors, but, inevitably, she’s tender and twitchy when it comes to taking her own advice. Still, she’s been talking online to handsome photographer Henry (Brandon Sklenar) for months now, and it’s time for that first date.
Henry picks a restaurant on the top floor of a glossily generic high-rise (The Game’s CRS could be operating on another floor), the kind of place that looks like it does terrific business lunches and subpar anything else. He’s also late, so Violet has to spend a couple minutes making small talk with the bartender (Gabrielle Ryan), the piano player (Ed Weeks), and a man waiting for his blind date (Reed Diamond). As far as establishing-the-playing-field scenes go, it’s not bad. The awkward corniness and unfunniness that comes when unpolished strangers endeavor to connect—or impress—feels right, and even though Drop’s genre isn’t a secret, for a while it really feels like Violet’s biggest problem tonight might be a date that can’t live up to her expectations, let alone her tentative hopes.
Then Henry arrives. Sklenar and Fahy have decent-if-unspectacular chemistry, but again, any sense of stiltedness works for their situation. This isn’t Before Sunrise, it’s two adults with baggage making a believable attempt to translate online closeness to in-person romance. Their carefulness with each other feels right, like each of them is running a series of compatibility checks. Okay, are we both equally annoyed by our improv-loving waiter (Jeffrey Self)? Do our senses of humor match up? Are we on the same page about kids?
Kid, in this case—Violet’s young son, Toby (Jacob Robinson). Violet has at least a flutter of a worry that Henry will think it’s too much for her to keep her phone on the table in case her babysitting sister (Violett Beane) needs her; Herny has a moment of alarm that bringing a Blackhawks hockey puck as a present for Toby seems more creepy than kind.
But really, they’re both overthinking it. It’s fine. The real problem is the series of ominous memes getting “dropped” to Violet’s phone. The trolling turns nightmarish when it comes with instructions to check her home’s security cameras—and, oh yeah, keep a straight face. Don’t give away that there’s anything wrong, even when you see a masked gunman lurking near your son.
The anonymous messages have some instructions for Violet, and there’s an actual purpose to it all that’s half-baked but sufficient. Don’t come to Drop for the explanation, though. The most fun the movie has is before the demands really escalate: Violet having to panic-grin her way through a first date with her son’s life on the line is darkly funny, and there’s a real agony to when her attempts to escape surveillance or get help are foiled in ways that make her evening even more awkward. Look, I’m sure that if I had a son, I wouldn’t like to see him get shot in the head, but my skin crawls off my body at the thought of having to be an inconvenient dick to waitstaff.
It does indeed boggle the mind that Henry doesn’t leave. The movie lampshades it, but even now, the best I can do is assume that it comes down to 1) Violet is hot, and 2) Henry is deeply into the sunk cost fallacy, and he didn’t spend all those months in her DMs to leave before dessert.
Drop isn’t reinventing the wheel, or even perfecting it, but it can still spin in a satisfying fashion and get you somewhere good. Occasionally I’m in the mood for just this kind of workmanlike thriller, especially when it involves an ordinary person forced into a contrived high-pressure situation. The film may not hold many surprises—Violet spends a lot of time trying to sleuth out who in the restaurant is monitoring her, but I don’t think any of you will have too much trouble guessing—but it still holds some narrative pleasures. (One of the biggest is how one character reacts, and commits, when they realize they have nothing left to lose.) And while it mostly looks like the direct-to-streaming movie it actually isn’t, there are some cool visual touches and one incredibly implausible action moment that made me laugh my ass off. I bet the theaters roared for that one, and sometimes that kind of dumb fun is what the movies are all about.
Drop is streaming on Peacock.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
China Moon — Madeline Stowe gets very naked in this, Criterion turned into a softcore porn channel so gradually I didn’t even notice (complimentary). But the nudity is the 90s addition to a story that desperately wants to be PURE NOIR and it winds up feeling like a mid cover version; some would-be flirtatious dialogue between Stowe and hero/sap Ed Harris sounds incredibly stoned and sets the tone early on. Harris is let down by the writing here, he is a 200 proof dope in a way that is very easy to see but the movie conceals like it’s being clever, so much of this is just marking time until a guy becomes slightly less stupid. There’s a nice little tweak at the end and is a decent watch but nothing more. Sandy Martin, aka Mrs. Mac, has a brief appearance as a gun dealer in the Breaking Bad Jim Beaver mode, where is her movie.
Babylon 5 — in his essay trashing science fiction, Donald Westlake talks about how he would want to write about how a guy who suddenly discovered he could teleport would feel and what that would do to his mind, while the publishers for such fiction wanted the teleportation guy story to be about war and politics and seemingly more active matters but ones that ignored the drama of this dude. The latest episode expands on a sci-fi conceit that I believe has been mentioned earlier, and then adds a bunch of plotty stuff that doesn’t really add up and focuses on one ethical issue that seems pretty small next to a larger one at play. But the heart of this is one guy finding out something about himself and that guy is played by Brad Dourif and man is he great here, a fascinating inversion of his work in Wise Blood. The drama of the man is what matters. On the other hand, the episode ends with some out-of-nowhere sci-fi weirdness from our boy Kosh, and that is fun too.
It feels like most, if not all, of the pieces are there in China Moon, including a cocky performance by a a youthful-looking Benicio del Toro. But what’s notably missing is a director who could put these pieces together in a convincing way.
Yeah, nothing is bad and it has that 90s craft going for it, but nothing sings either. Stowe and Harris don’t bring the necessary heat at all.
I think that is endemic to Madeline Stowe performances. I’ve liked her in some things, but smoldering she ain’t.
Justified, Season Two, Episode Seven, “Save My Love”
“Everyone’s capable of doing something like this, Winona.”
It is truly mindblowing how purely entertaining this show is – even compared to something like The Shield. I get pleasure just from seeing the guest star credits – seeing Stephen Root and Jere Burns come back, for example, to say this wonderful dialogue. This is before you get to the meat and potatoes of this show with the swerving plot – Raylan seeing Winona and her bag in the office; Raylan seeing Boyd in the courtroom and being knocked for six; Raylan and Winona getting every distraction in the world from getting the bag where they want it. TV is a writer’s medium and an actor’s medium, and Justified is like most TV shows, only moreso.
Anyway, Winona reveals she actually took all the money, which elevates her into fullblown Justified dumbass. There is one lesson this show teaches over and over and over, and that’s don’t take things what which don’t belong to you (I’ve followed this rule my whole life and it’s worked out well). Meanwhile, a developer named Carol enters the story; she’s a kind of character that’s existed on the edge of this show so far, mainly as a victim – higher in monetary class than most of our characters but not as high as some of the villains. Very interested to see where she goes.
Raylan’s right, Boyd does look good in that suit. I enjoy that the Goggins pulsates with energy; he’d stand out in a lineup of five thousand. I am too young to know about Geraldo Rivera looking in Al Capone’s vault, but I know anyway, though not enough to know if that’s how you spell his name.
Biggest Laugh: “Judge Reardon wants to see you in chambers.” / “Me? Why?” / “I bet that’ll come up in conversation when you see him in chambers.”
Biggest Non-Art Laugh: “Shit! Sorry. Wrong button.”
Top Ownage: Ownage-light episode actually. Judge Reardon saying he was gonna kick the loud plaintiff out of his courtroom if they didn’t shut up and then kicking them out when they didn’t shut up is about as good as it gets. Like I sympathise because it sounds like another kind of hell to live through filming the brutal death of your father, but they were not acting in what you would call a goal-oriented manner, were they?
The X-Files, “3” and “One Breath”
My favorite part of “3” was that I said at the beginning that it would be funny if Krycek pulled a George Costanza and showed up to work like nothing had happened. That image entertained me, which is more than I can say about anything else in this episode.
I know it’s a TV and movie truism that couples who are actually sleeping together have no chemistry on-screen, but no one has ever proven that as thoroughly as David Duchovny and Perrey Reeves. With all the ostensible borderline-kinky dynamite they have to work with, they still feel like two blocks of wood that happen to be placed close together. And I thought Duchovny was one of those actors who generated a fair amount of chemistry with almost everybody!
Anyway, this is my least favorite episode so far–dull story, weak plotting, no good guest stars–and I’d rather watch “The Jersey Devil” twice than watch this again once.
“One Breath” is thankfully much better, with a comatose Scully simply appearing in a hospital and Mulder understandably losing his mind about it. The plot isn’t the point here–though the biggest and best parts of it, involving Mulder (barely) passing up a chance to kill the “Cancer Man” and the flunkies X claims are responsible for Scully’s abduction, are good–so much as the emotional arc that means Mulder may have to resign himself to Scully’s death even as Scully herself, in a serene kind of limbo, may have to make the decision to reject it. Great to have Don Davis back at her dad. Unfortunately, Davis’s past work means that this can only be the second most moving speech he’s made about loving and believing in his child, but it’s still enough to get me teary.
Great use of the Lone Gunmen in this episode. I love Frohike bringing Scully flowers–an enthusiastically pervy crush converted to a sincere gesture–but my favorite moment with the trio might be when Byers gets caught up in the problem solving aspects of identifying what’s going on with Scully’s branched DNA and then stumbles when Mulder asks if she can live. It’s Harwood taking the time for the emotional beat of Byers remembering the human stakes here, and it’s lovely.
Mitch Pileggi is also particularly fantastic here, not only in the the Vietnam speech that serves as a kind of acting showcase but also in his smaller reactions to Mulder, especially when he talks about liking Scully. Mulder’s had several chances by now to realize that Skinner is an ally rather than an obstruction, but–since he’s kind of defined by a lack of trust in the Powers That Be and since he knows Skinner’s been at least intermittently mixed up with the Cigarette-Smoking Man–he hasn’t; this feels like the episode where he finally does. Also, Skinner pointing out the new THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING plaque on his desk is some grade-A bitchiness, and I’m here for it.
A newly awake Scully finally being reunited with Mulder is everything my heart could have hoped for. The way Gillian Anderson smiles is so luminous.
“Mulder, I had the strength of your beliefs.”
“3” is the vampire episode, right? Just sucks when it should be at least a little hot, and there’s a coming episode that has a similar dynamic and more of an erotic charge. The next episode, as you say, is great, and I love both the CSM and Skinner’s monologues. (I think that’s where the latter became my favorite character.) I think this is where the CSM talks about how it wouldn’t be worth it to kill him, right?
“3” is indeed the vampire episode. So much squandered potential! (Bonus points for including “sucks” in a diss of a vampire episode, btw.)
Yeah, I think it’s CSM who says that killing Mulder would make him into a martyr for the cause and is therefore best avoided. He’s got some great dialogue here.
Lol the sucks was unintentional but thanks! And this is where the CSM starts to feel like an Ellroy character, able to see his life in full scope: he even tells Mulder he likes him and Scully and that the person he’d be killing hasn’t accrued much, “a little power” and a lonely apartment.
Conor has reminded me that this was the episode with that CSM monologue – the phrase “No wife, no family, a little bit of power” is one of the greatest in storytelling ever, with CSM straight up admitting he’s a sad little man with no real attachments in this world beyond what he can use to dominate others, something William B Davis will wordlessly incorporate into a fantastic moment later. Authoritarianism comes from fear, and CSM is a scared little man.
It’s a fantastic moment, especially since it’s such a shift in how the series has presented him so far: even before we get the speech, just seeing that apartment and his off-hours life–so sad and so small–is jarring.
Precisely. From this point, even his domination comes off as pathetic, which for me, is close enough to sympathetic – he becomes so specific and compelling because he’s an empty shell of power and knows it, and Davis plays him so sincerely.
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning — This is from a few days ago. I liked it. Unlike most, I felt like the earlier entries in the series were more interesting than the middle installments when McQuarrie took over, but I also think he’s gotten better. I liked Dead Reckoning Part One (as it was called then) a lot after the overlong exposition at the beginning, and this is the same. Takes too long to get moving, but then it’s good. (I got one big belly laugh — at not with — when the opening credits just went on and on and on and I wondered if this was just going to be the whole movie, like Too Many Cooks.) The drama around Angela Basset at NORAD was sort of moot given what else was happening, but I liked the climax of it. The submarine sequences were particularly exciting (although they ruined one cool moment of Cruisian indomitability by an earlier flash forward, something that MacQuarrie has done before, because he doesn’t trust himself, I guess). Esai Morales is also more fun in this one as the villain — in Part One he had to be cool and brooding but here he gets to cackle like a madman. Then the final sequences are exciting but not as exciting as the train sequence that climaxed the previous picture. All in all a good time, and this two-parter is significantly better in my opinion than Rogue Nation/Fallout, even if this installment isn’t as good as the last one.
This turns up everything about the McQuarrie M:Is to eleven, which sounds like a great thing on paper (and in practice with the two massive action set pieces we get), but that actually means we’re also turning the sludge up as well. I was already half out on anything in between the action sequences, and adding so much weight and time to plot lines I couldn’t care less about was near fatal to me. But hambone Morales makes up a lot of ground, and at least the patience is rewarded with the wing-walker sequence.
The Rehearsal S1E6 – Did not expect almost anything in this episode, though I got spoiled on one major “plot” point, but this didn’t bother me that much and it’s generally nerve-wracking and very cool in how Nathan pulls off what seems dangerous and even impossible. (Safety Consultant John Goglia, unlike the senator, is a professional, listens to Fielder, and seems to agree with every gambit except this one, where he is understandably visibly nervous when he hears it.) My friend referred to this as the best piece of media he’d seen about autistic learning, where it’s hard for us to process certain tasks, especially through intuition, and it builds to a profound triumph and recognition, at least for Show Nathan, looking for interaction and the ease of action without anxiety or the perpetual mask. (The zoom into his eyes is amazing.) Never has “Bring Me to Life” felt so moving to me. Great television.
The Practice, “Save the Mule” – The titular mule is a Mexican woman paid to smuggle drugs in via too many ingested condoms of cocaine. Lindsay is told by the drug dealer who’s got her on retainer to prevent the Feds from x-raying the mule or making her crap out the drugs since that will ultimately harm him, but Lindsay would much rather help the woman. So we get what is Lindsay’s last crisis of conscience about helping drug dealers before she finally says no. Some good twists here and good performances by Paul Ben-Victor as the mid-level drug dealer Lindsay defended previously and Gregory Itzin as the US Attorney on the case. (That’s two episodes in a row with future 24 Presidents, following DB Woodside.)
But this one is very busy. Bobby is hired by a man who tried to blow up a lab during Vietnam who is ready to turn himself in, only Bobby learns no one has been chasing him even a little. We discover that Bobby and Lindsay had a secret fling and that the reason he’s been so hesitant with Helen is that he doesn’t want to hurt Lindsay. (Ah, TV soap.) And Jimmy agrees to take on a lawsuit about power lines causing a cancer cluster. I am going to have what to say about this.
Frasier, “The Life of the Party” – Tired of not having any dates, Frasier and Niles throw a singles party. (Don’t ask me how two men who can’t meet women find women to come to this party. Also don’t ask me why Frasier is still so desperate in a season where he’s had three sexual relationships and a few dates beyond that.) At the party, stuff happens, but most notably Roz goes into labor. My guess is that the writers had no idea how to do an episode about her having the baby without it turning into a cliche, but the surrounding story isn’t much better.
MLB on TBS – Weird how two weeks ago Brian Anderson and Jeff Francouer were terrible and this time they wre good. Maybe they needed the all star break to rest. There was a weird play in the first inning of interest only to diehard fans, but it came on the heels of another weird play the night before involving the same catcher. That’s baseball, Suzyn.
It’s very funny how Frasier diagnoses / judges Sam for his sex addiction, when Frasier also has an impossibly large number of partners.
I guess this is a standard pitfall of any sitcom where the main character is single, especially if you don’t want to cast a recurring girlfriend.
Frasier doesn’t have THAT many, and a lot of his angst is often about not sex but a relationship. But yeah, he certainly has a lot of partners for a man in his 40s in the age of AIDS.
the bear, finished season 4. The show itself is following Camry’s arc. Season 1 was a bold, ambitious take on traditional workplace dramedy. Season 2 reworked the format into
something truly special and unique, but was sandbagged by carmy’s self sabotage. Seasons 3 and 4 are just wheel-spinning. It’s like it Cheers did 2 seasons on Sam’s relapse.
Revisiting some old new doctor who. The second half of season 7 and the clara mystery are so good. Day of the doctor is great. Moffat can be self-indulgent and obnoxious, but when he’s on fire he’s on fire. Also lots of great guest stars this season—i think this was peak new who popularity and moffat brings in big cult names (but not a bunch of A list stars)—liam cunningham, diana rigg, warwick davis, and of course john hurt. I know the real world reason eccleston didn’t come back (he has a deep seated hatred for everyone at the bbc); I like to think the in-universe reason is that he would have immediately killed the war doctor creating a paradox.
I’m not sure where else to put this, and Trigger Warning, but I’ve also seen some nightmarish images and even a video of a killing from Gaza of an unarmed boy from the POV of his camera. Please, please call your reps and senators, do whatever you can to get Israel to lift their blockade.
Year of the Month update!
This August, we’ll be covering 1959. Check out all these movies, albums, books, et al
And there’s still time to write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al this month!
TBD: Captain Nath: Separation Sunday
TBD: Captain Nath: The Sunlandic Twins
Jul. 28th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Sin City
I spent most of the movie trying to figure out where I recognized Reed Diamond from, by the end of the movie I still couldn’t place him, so I had to look him up on IMDb.* It’s been a long time since Homicide: Life on the Street.
*true story
Time to watch The Shield!
What’s The Shield? This is the first I’m hearing of it.
I’m always delighted to see him turn up anywhere.