By Jake Wilson
DROP
★★½
MA, 95 minutes, in cinemas
If M. Night Shyamalan made a romantic comedy, it might wind up a little like Drop. Not because there’s some mind-blowing twist (spoiler: there isn’t) but because the director Christopher Landon and his writers use many of the ingredients of the formula Shyamalan has perfected in films like Split and Trap: a confined space, a mix of empathy and cruelty, and weird camera angles bringing home that the protagonist is under constant surveillance.
Brandon Sklenar and Meghann Fahy in Drop.Credit: AP
As for where the rom-com part comes in, much of the tension arises from the very recognisable circumstances of an awkward first date – an especially charged occasion for the widowed heroine Violet (Meghann Fahy) who’s spent the last few years concentrating on her young son Toby (Jacob Robinson).
But finally, she’s taken the plunge, and now she’s sitting in a fancy glass-walled restaurant on the 38th floor opposite a handsome guy (Brandon Sklenar) she met on an app, with the Chicago skyline glittering all around them.
Henry, the guy in question, shows up late but proves to be extremely patient and understanding. As he needs to be, given Violet’s restless behaviour, she keeps glancing anxiously round the room and can’t seem to get her mind off her phone.
The truth is that Violet is having the worst night of her life, courtesy of a mysterious figure, apparently somewhere in the restaurant, who keeps sending her menacing phone messages.
To save Toby’s life, Violet has to follow an increasingly extreme set of instructions while smilingly pretending to Henry and everyone else that nothing is wrong.
The trick of this premise is that it works on two levels. While the stakes are life and death, there’s still scope for Fahy to use her comic talents – and while Violet’s concern is all for Toby, we viewers may be just as anxious about seeing her make a fool of herself.
The film’s central hour, unfolding in something close to real-time, is as suspenseful as anything I’ve experienced in a cinema for a while: the best compliment I can give is that I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
But as the end approaches, it becomes clear Landon has nothing up his sleeve. The revelations about Violet’s past are less extreme than might have been hoped, and the main villain’s motives are remarkably uninteresting.
The film is also close to being a one-woman show. I won’t give away if Henry is really as good-natured as he seems – but regardless, Sklenar seems to have been directed to keep his performance low-key so we aren’t distracted from Violet’s private meltdown.
I also won’t give away if Matt (Jeffrey Self), the obnoxious waiter who fancies himself as a comedian, masks any kind of hidden agenda. I will say that at the climax, a better script might have done more with this character’s supposed talent for improvisation.
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