Drop is a Chicago-set Hitchcockian thriller that will have audiences sitting on the edge of their seats for just over an hour and a half.

After talking for some three months, Violet (Meghann Fahy) is finally on a first date with Henry (Brandon Sklenar). This first date is more nerve-wracking than usual. Not so much because of leaving son Toby (Jacob Robinson) at home with her sister, Jen (Violett Beane), but because of the constant messages being sent to her from some anonymous user. The catch? Whoever is messaging Violet is doing so from within 50 feet away and they know her every move. Oh yeah, they want her to kill Henry or her family dies.

Who is the anonymous person sending messages? That’s the thing–we don’t know. Christopher Landon’s direction along with Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach’s screenplay is written in a way to keep audiences guessing. Benoit Blanc isn’t walking through the door to solve the mystery behind Drop. It’s just unfortunate that everything comes at the expense of meeting Henry and getting to know him better.

The photos might feel like someone is playing a prank at first but once they start getting homicidal, things start tensing up. Violet has home security cameras installed and only gets tenser as the evening plays on. In what may be a case of art-imitates-life, producer Cameron Fuller and executive producer Sam Lerner were on the receiving end of such messages while on vacation. It’s a tense and scary situation but they turned to friends and that’s how the screenplay began.

While Drop is set in Chicago, don’t expect to find the upscale restaurant Palate located on the top floor of any Chicago skyscraper. It doesn’t exist. The complete restaurant–functional, no less–was built by production designer Susie Cullen and her team at Ardmore Studios across the pond. Unless the background was made using visual effects, they likely only filmed second unit footage in Chicago. Not that I really go out to restaurants–unless they are kosher–but they certainly fooled me. Between A Working Man and Drop, Chicagoans deserve a much-needed break!

Filmmakers definitely did their homework as far as figuring out the type of people who would be working at the restaurant in Drop. For instance, Matt (Jeffery Self) is on his first-ever shift at Palate but that’s not important. No, it’s the fact that he is taking classes at The Second City Training Center. When he announced this, it got applause from me during the screening. It won’t surprise me if there are groans from Chicago audiences as he brings his improv training to work. In any event, Matt is going to probably want to find himself a new job.

If you were to place Drop in the 1990s, it would fit in well because the thriller is a love letter to the thrillers from that era. The same, too, goes for Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma films. One can tell how much admiration that director Christopher Landon has for the genre. I was hesitant to see the film at first because I thought it would be a horror film due to the names and production company attached. After watching the film, I’d say it runs the full gamut of thriller and almost–but not quite–crosses into the horror genre.

DIRECTOR: Christopher Landon
SCREENWRITERS: Jillian Jacobs & Chris Roach
CAST: Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Violett Beane, Jacob Robinson, Reed Diamond, Gabrielle Ryan, Jeffery Self, Ed Weeks, Travis Nelson

Universal Pictures will release Drop in theaters on April 11, 2025. Grade: 4/5

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