Drop (2025)

Drop (2025) Also known as Drop Game, especially in certain French-speaking countries.

If Christopher Landon had only directed Happy Death Day (2017) and its sequel, Happy Death Day 2U (2019), I’d have said he was a director of genius. Unfortunately, he’s made other films too!

Freaky (2020), a sort of horrific parody of Freaky Friday (1976 and its 2003 remake), was already a big disappointment. And, here, we continue in the same vein.

The idea was good, though, and it promised to be a fast-paced, scary thriller, but unfortunately the ingredients just aren’t there.

The film is horrifying from the twentieth minute onwards, with its succession of notifications on the phone that any sensible person would deactivate, especially on a date! A guy who really put up with that wouldn’t be credible. Of course she wants to be reachable for her son, but there are limits and, what’s more, her sister is looking after him.

Ahh… it’s taking so long!
Ahhh how it drags on!
The kind of date that’s impossible!

The woman’s on your phone all the time and that’s going to annoy a lot of people. Some fairly incoherent reactions and a far-fetched script meant that I quickly stopped caring about any of the characters, except perhaps for the photographer who seemed as clueless as I was in this turnip. One of the film’s interests could then be to list the countless implausibilities.

Meghann Fahy, known for series such as The White Lotus and The Bold Type, has quite expressive eyes. It’s no surprise that you can see them on the film’s cover. Some people think she plays badly, but I think she’s been well chosen. In any case, if a film is bad, people will still love it. If a film is good, some people will hate it. And it’s the same for actors and actresses. Far too many people confuse bad actors with detestable characters.

Brandon Sklenar also made an impression on some people who adored him in his role as a beast hunter in the 1923 series alongside the duo of sacred monsters Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren.

Warning: Spoilers!!!

We expect tension and action throughout the film. And when it happens, it’s so unrealistic and uninteresting that it’s funny. These fifteen surreal minutes are completely delirious, to the point where you wonder if the film isn’t a satire. When the window explodes and they’re sucked into the air outside, as if they’re undergoing the same kind of depressurisation as when they’re at an altitude of 10,000 metres… it’s enough to make you explode with laughter. I think some people almost left the room thinking it was an insult to the 7th Art!

What didn’t surprise me was that it’s still a Christopher Landon film! He’s known for making comic horror. Of course, this film takes a very serious direction. So I thought that this time he wasn’t going to make us laugh. And yet, at the end, he’s back to being the Christopher Landon I knew! So it’s hardly surprising that even the special effects are laughable. But I do have the impression that he lost his way in terms of the direction he wanted to take with this film. After all, you can’t mix two genres and remain coherent. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) managed it… but so many others have burnt their wings or broken their teeth.

There are a few crude plot devices that bring the film into disrepute, and all this just for the sake of a spectacular finale? That might have been fair enough, but it’s not!

A film in the purest tradition of American thrillers, with a breathless plot that very skilfully keeps the viewer going for a while… but I give up very easily after the first half hour if it’s crammed full of ridiculous, unreal moments. Just because a thriller nails you to your seat from the very first shot, doesn’t mean it’s excellent!

It’s worth noting that there are some very fine camera movements, which are quite original.

Second Spoilers Alert!

Why poison the pianist in front of all the surveillance cameras rather than the photographer? Why send a killer to Violet’s house instead of the photographer’s? Why wait until the last moment to steal the SD card, but still come up with a plan that involved planting microphones everywhere and poison in the toilet? The answer is undoubtedly: to be able to make this film!

So… despite an interesting basic idea, the film remains, alas, bad.