“What’s terrifying about Drop is that it feels very grounded. This is a scenario that some people might see and feel like it could happen to them,” says director Christopher Landon. “There’s just something about the idea of being tormented and harassed by an unseen person on your phone that I think most people can relate to. I believe we’ve all experienced some form of that, whether it’s on social media or maybe even with an ex, so there’s an immediate relatable element to the concept of Drop, which ends up becoming the fully realized and ultimate nightmare version of that.”
Director Christopher Landon returns to the thriller genre with the playful, keep-you-guessing intensity he perfected in the Happy Death Day films with this of-the-moment whodunnit where everyone in the vicinity is a suspect . . . or victim. Drop is jointly produced by blockbuster genre houses Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes.
“The Blumhouse brand has always been about suspense and terror,” says Landon. “One of the things I love the most about them is that they take big swings and try stuff that a lot of other people would shy away from. I’m sure that if I took this script around Hollywood and said I wanted to make a thriller about two people sitting at a dinner table all night, most people would answer, “No, thank you.” But Jason Blum and Blumhouse trust filmmakers and gave us the opportunity to tell a story that we think is personal and worth telling.”
In Drop, Landon saw an opportunity to make a style of film he felt a certain nostalgia for. “I wanted to make a sort of throwback to ’90s thrillers and even further back to Hitchcock and De Palma, but with this very modern conceit at the center of it,” Landon says. “That was really appealing to me. This also felt like my chance to make a love letter to films like Red Eye. That’s a movie I really love, and think is under-appreciated. It is such a tight, contained thriller.”
Landon found an even deeper connection to the material, which involves themes of domestic abuse and the impact of that trauma on survivors. “I’ve had people very close to me who have been victims of abuse, specifically domestic abuse,” says Landon. “This was very personal to me, and something I wanted to handle delicately. But I also wanted to show that there is a path for people, a way out.”
“I think audiences are going to love how fast-paced, suspenseful, exciting and emotional the movie is,” says Landon. “You know, I think it fires on a lot of different cylinders, having a real conversation with the audience about the nature of our highly abusive online culture. I went through something personal prior to making this movie, where I found myself being attacked by a bunch of people I didn’t know, and it’s a scary and bizarre feeling. So, I think audiences are going to relate to Violet and the situation that she’s in, rooting for her to get the upper hand and take back control. And Drop is definitely a must see on the big screen because it’s such an audience experience. There are many twists and turns and surprises, which just hits differently in a movie theater where you can hear everyone reacting together as they try to work out the mystery. That experience is irreplaceable.”
Imagine you are at a restaurant, enjoying your evening, when an unexpected notification pops up on your phone. You have received a drop request from someone in the restaurant, someone you do not know. Assuming the drop must be a prank, you accept. But, instead of funny memes or jokes in return, you begin to receive messages that feel both threatening and personal. You get the eerie feeling that you are being watched, observed, toyed with. In a matter of minutes, your night out has taken a dark, and potentially dangerous, turn.
This scenario, which provides the narrative engine for Drop, is also its real-life inspiration.
Platinum Dunes producer Cameron Fuller and his friend, actor Sam Lerner (The Goldbergs), were on vacation overseas with family when they fell victim to a wave of unrecognized drops. “We’re at a beautiful dinner and we start receiving drops from someone in the restaurant,” Fuller says. “Over the course of the meal, they are getting progressively scarier. By the end, we thought we had figured out who it was, but we were never able to confirm it. That was the scariest part. We never knew who the sender of these drops was. And then we said, ‘maybe this should be a movie.’”
The Screenplay
Fuller and Lerner brought that idea back to the states and enlisted the help of screenwriters Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Roach, whom Lerner knew. The writers wrote the screenplays for Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare and Fantasy Island. In addition to Drop, Jacobs and Roach have often collaborate with director Christopher Landon, known for blending genres. Some of their notable work includes writing for films like Freaky (2020), a horror-comedy twist on a body-swap story, and Happy Death Day 2U (2019), the sequel to the time-loop slasher film Happy Death Day. Their screenwriting style frequently mixes suspense, humour, and unexpected emotional depth.
“Usually, a movie doesn’t happen this way,” Fuller says. “This was just a combination of luck and having great people involved.”
“I wasn’t looking for a thriller specifically,” says Landon, “but I tend to gravitate towards things that I feel on a gut level, and I just had such a visceral reaction to this script. In a strange way, it felt a bit like a bookend to me. Early in my career I wrote a film called Disturbia, which was very much my love letter to Alfred Hitchcock by way of John Hughes. Drop felt like an evolution for me—it was nice to work on something a little bit more adult and mature after having made a lot of films that focus on teenagers.”
Not long after this initial meeting, Jacobs and Roach returned to Fuller with a completed script. He was floored by it. “When you read a script that holds you the whole way through, it’s kind of like you’ve struck gold,” Fuller says. Fuller then delivered the script to his father, Brad Fuller—producer of the A Quiet Place and The Purge franchises. “My dad usually doesn’t get excited about things,” Cameron Fuller says, “but he got really excited about this one.”
Brad Fuller immediately saw the potential for a rare kind of thriller. The script expertly blends elements from the ticking-clock thriller and whodunit genres, concocting a single-location story that feels both timeless and relevant in today’s digital world. From the moment Violet steps into the restaurant in the film, the narrative takes place in real time, as the audience experiences every single second of terror with her. “I’m personally attracted to films that feel like they could actually happen, and this was a great realistic thriller,” Brad Fuller says. “The script was a movie the first time I read it.”
The writing process involved crafting a modern thriller that cleverly integrates technology into its suspenseful narrative.
Finding the right director
As the Fullers set out to find the ideal filmmaker to direct the project, Brad recalled an old friend who seemed the perfect man for the job. “About 20 years ago, my partner Michael Bay and I were developing a movie at Universal, and we hired a young Chris Landon to rewrite the script,” Brad Fuller says. “Chris came in, rewrote the script, and Bay and I loved him, so he was always in the back of my head.” Michael Bay, as both a director and producer, has been responsible for some of the biggest blockbuster franchises of the past 30 years, from Bad Boys to Transformers, The Purge to A Quiet Place. He knows talent when he sees it. “Chris Landon was cool before anyone knew he was cool,” Bay says. “He knows how to tell a killer, entertaining story on screen. You can’t learn that; it’s intrinsic. You either have it or you don’t.”
Landon had come a long way since his rewrite days at Universal, becoming one of the most sought-after horror directors in the industry. Brad called him. “I said, ‘I know we haven’t talked in a long time, but I have a script that you just have to read,’” Brad Fuller says. “He called me the next day and said, ‘I love it.’ And so, Chris committed to it.”
Christopher Landon shares a longstanding relationship with both the Fullers and Jason Blum. Having helmed many of Blumhouse’s signature hits—Freaky (2020), Happy Death Day (2017) and Happy Death Day 2U (2019), Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015), and Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)—the director leaped at the opportunity to work with the company again. “I think the reason I’ve had such a lasting relationship with Blumhouse, and specifically Jason, is the amount of creative freedom they give their filmmakers,” Landon says. “If you can make your movie within a certain budget parameter, you have control. It is an empowering situation, and that is why a lot of filmmakers keep going back.”
Jason Blum was equally happy to be working with Landon again. “Chris has this incredible gift as a director of finding the fun and the pure adrenaline rush in movies that are primarily designed to scare the hell out of you,” Blum says. “You are on the edge of your seat, or curled into a ball, terrified for what is coming, but you are also having a blast. Among his many talents, he is an expert in getting the tone right, and so was a perfect fit for Drop.”
Drop is set almost entirely in one location, the upscale restaurant Palate, located on the top floor of a Chicago skyscraper. But you won’t find it on OpenTable or Grubhub. Production designer Susie Cullen and her team built the entire, fully functional restaurant from scratch at Ardmore Studios just outside Dublin, Ireland.
Cullen embraced the opportunity to tell a story in one location. “When a script is spent largely in one space, it definitely puts pressure on that space to hold interest,” Cullen says. “It’s a huge consideration because with that much time there, the camera is going to be all over the space, and there’s nowhere to hide.”
“One of the things I love the most about Drop is that it’s very much about a woman simultaneously trying to solve a mystery and prevent a crime,” says Landon. “Violet has been tasked with murdering her date, and there is an unseen person in the restaurant who is this sort of puppet master controlling her – watching her every move, listening to her every word – while she’s trying to figure out who it is. So, I loved playing with the mystery elements, casting suspicion on different characters in the movie. Is it the bartender? Is it the hostess? Is it the waiter? Could it even be her date, Henry? There’s at least a hundred people in that room with her; so, it could be anyone. I think it’s fun to watch the audience get into that element of the story, trying to figure out who it is. That’s really the joy of the movie.”
First dates are nerve-wracking enough. Going on a first date while an unnamed, unseen troll pings you personal memes that escalate from annoying to homicidal? Blood-chilling. In Drop, Violet (Meghann Fahy), a widowed mother on her first date in years, arrives at an upscale restaurant where she is relieved that her date, Henry ( Brandon Sklenar) is more charming and handsome than she expected. But their chemistry begins to curdle as Violet begins being irritated and then terrorized by a series of anonymous drops to her phone. She is instructed to tell nobody and follow instructions or the hooded figure she sees on her home security cameras will kill Violet’s young son and babysitting sister. Violet must do exactly as directed or everyone she loves will die. Her unseen tormentor’s final directive? Kill Henry.
