Speaking from experience involving a Facebook hack suffered two
months ago, it is fair to say the new horror subgenre of being terrorized and/or
violated of one’s privacy in the digital realm is an unseen ever developing and
transforming threat to contemporary society.
Among the last couple times we saw cybercrime as an extended and vast
endeavor across the silver screen was Nerve from 2016 and more recently The
Beekeeper with Jason Statham.
As we
continue to navigate the labyrinthine corridors of the world wide web, another
new form of digital invasiveness comes in the form of the AirDrop wireless technology
allowing users to post and share pictures or videos with other phones within radius. While the AirDrop feature continues to be
controversial for it’s use in protests and numerous incidents involving hijacking
threats, it was only a matter of time before it became the subject of Happy
Death Day and Freaky director Christopher Landon’s Drop
opening in theaters tomorrow starring Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar.
Widowed single mother and domestic abuse survivor Violet
(Meghann Fahy) is on a blind date at a ritzy high-rise restaurant with Henry
(Brandon Sklenar), leaving her younger sister Jen (Violette Beane) to babysit
her underage son Toby (Jacob Robinson) when she begins receiving anonymous
AirDrops (dubbed DigiDrops here) to her phone with an increasingly threatening
tone.
Soon the caller begins sending
videos of her security cameras showing a masked assailant lurking in her house
threatening to kill Jen and Toby unless she follows through with a murder plot
by the caller to murder her date Henry.
As paranoia sets in while the bartender and their obnoxious waiter sense
something is wrong, Violet is trying her best to keep her cool and play along
while desperately trying to send any kind of SOS alert for outside help. Yet at every turn, the caller seems to have
the upper hand and she soon grows increasingly suspicious of her date she’s
been tasked with murdering.
There’s even a little bit of Nicolas Winding Refn heightened lighting
going on here as when characters are singled out and the lighting dims so only
people in the center of the frame are visible ala the elevator scene in Drive.
Featuring a strong ensemble cast
including Violett Beane, Gabrielle Ryan as a street-smart waitress and a
surprising supporting turn from Memphis Belle actor Reed Diamond, the
film primarily rests on the shoulders of Meghann Fahy who makes Violet into a resourceful
heroine anchored by her believable and tragic backstory as a survivor of
physical and psychological abuse. Almost
stealing the show for comic relief is a running gay involving Jeffrey Self as
an overbearing but well-meaning gay waiter who also starts to notice something
is off at Violet’s dinner table.
The idea of a swanky restaurant
being the backdrop for horrors including but not limited to madness and murder
goes back to Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
and more recently Mark Mylod’s The Menu.
While Drop doesn’t quite measure up to the opulence of those
films, it still works as a Hitchcockian nerve-wracker touching on just how much
more vulnerable to invasive attack technological innovation and
telecommunication have rendered us.
--Andrew Kotwicki