"Drop" Review

Tonight brings a double-feature of short high concept thrillers: Locked and the lead-off hitter, Drop, directed by Christoper Landon (Freaky) from a script by Jillian Jacobs & Chris Roach (the Lucy "Sex Muppet" Hale-starring Fantasy Island and Truth Or Dare).

Meghann Fahy (The Bold Type) stars as Violet Gates, a therapist who specializes in abuse survivors owing to her status as a widowed single mother as hinted at in the uncomfortable prologue where her husband is savagely beating her.

But now it's five years later and it's time to start dating. She leaves her myopic son Toby (Jacob Robinson) in the care of her younger sister Jen (Violett Beane, CW's The Flash) who comes over and advises her to go for a sexier look for the big date.

Violet arrives ahead of her date at the ritzy top floor restaurant, Palate, and while waiting at the bar she is approached by Richard (Reed Diamond, Dollhouse) asking if she was his blind date. Since she isn't, they chat briefly until his date does arrive and we can tell it's not going to go well for him. We also meet Cara (Gabrielle Ryan, Power Book IV: Force), who seems more of an intuitive therapist than the therapist.

Her date, Henry (Brandon Sklenar, It Ends With Us) arrives toting his camera bag because he didn't want to leave it in the car in Chicago. He's one of those guys who seems so perfect that it's hard to believe he needed a dating app what with all the women throwing panties at him on the street. But she finds it hard to get lost in his dreamy eyes because her phone keeps blowing up (figuratively) with Digi-Drops, a fictitious social media game where people in close proximity can send memes and messages.

At first it's merely distracting, but then it gets serious when a message tells her she needs to kill her date. When she pushes back, she is told check her home security cameras where she sees a masked man in her kitchen, staring at the camera there, holding up a silenced pistol. Ruh-roh! She tries various ways to let someone know, but the mystery messenger has microphones conveniently planted everywhere and seems to be ahead of her every move. Due to the range of the drop app, the culprit has to be in the restaurant, but with everyone on their phones all the time, it's hard to tell which one it is. Hijinks ensue.

The premise of Drop is pretty cool, but the execution is wanting because there are single points of failure in the scheme beginning with the first demand of Violet that she swipe the memory card from the camera and destroy it. If Henry hadn't brought his camera bag, the scheme fails; if he took the card out and put it in his pocket, the scheme fails; if he swapped the card out and put in a fresh card, you get the picture. (I'm a photographer and whenever I've done events, I've always had multiple cards prepared so I could shoot each night on its own card and not risk losing everything. I also don't format the cards until I've transferred and made backups of photos.)

Then there's the matter of how weird she's acting. Most guys would've run for the hills, no matter how hot the woman is and while Fahy is actress attractive, she's not Don't Care How Crazy, Must Smash hawt, though she manages to keep Snaps McDreamy around long enough for the plot to happen. However, the finale begins to test the limits of going along with it as it jettisons what remaining scraps of realism it barely possessed.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.