Drop Review – A Glossy Thriller That Never Quite Lands

Megan Fahy faces real-life dating fears in Christopher Landon’s sleek but shallow thriller Drop.

Review: Drop (2025)

2.5 out of 5 stars

“Eat, Pray, Chainsaw”: Christopher Landon’s Latest Feels Like Déjà Vu in a Digital Mask

Christopher Landon returns to the genre space with Drop, a psychological slasher cloaked in glossy aesthetics, familiar trauma beats, and a whodunit structure that sadly never quite sticks the landing. What begins with the potential to be a bold, tech-era thriller about online dating spirals into yet another example of Landon’s well-worn formula: women in pain, eerily designed homes, masked assailants, and a tone that wavers between Lifetime movie melodrama and home invasion horror-lite.

Megan Fahy stars as Violet, a seemingly put-together woman navigating the terrifying unknowns of digital courtship. Her sister (played by Violet Beane) watches her child while Violet meets Henry (Brandon Sklenar), the kind of charming stranger whose smile lingers just a little too long. The early promise of Drop lies in its setup—it taps into a real and immediate fear shared by millions navigating today’s dating landscape. But the thrills quickly unravel into a sluggish narrative bogged down by unbelievable decisions and characters who feel like stitched composites of “traumatized suburbanite” archetypes rather than real people.

Landon’s flair for production design is once again undeniable. The interiors are moodboard-worthy, the tension is paced well at first, and the camera captures just enough of the setting to make you feel like something terrible is hiding behind every door. But unlike Freaky or Happy Death Day, where Landon leaned into humor and invention, Drop plays its trauma cards too seriously—and not seriously enough. There’s no real grit, no real depth. Just surface-level tension dressed up in trauma-core chic.

And here lies the problem: Drop wants to feel profound. It wants to echo the lived experiences of women dealing with real abuse, fear, and survival. But there’s a hollowness to how it handles those themes, a sense that Landon is more interested in aestheticizing suffering than unpacking it. The emotional weight never sticks because it doesn’t feel like it was earned—or lived in. It feels like horror by way of a male screenwriter checking boxes off a trauma checklist, all wrapped up in a TikTok-filtered bow.

There’s also an uncomfortable undercurrent in the way Landon continues to frame his female protagonists—almost as if their entire value hinges on how much pain they can endure and how polished they look doing it. Fahy gives it her all, and none of the cast falters performance-wise. But they’re trapped in a narrative that feels like it wants to be Gone Girl with an iPhone and ends up more like Gone Mild.

By the time the third act rolls around, and the blood begins to spill, you’re left wishing someone—anyone—would say or do something that subverts expectations. But Drop doesn’t subvert. It replays. The killer’s reveal? Flat. The commentary on dating and tech? Thin. Even the sisterly bond, which has one of the film’s sharpest lines (one we won’t spoil), feels more like a missed opportunity than a breakthrough.

Yes, there’s an audience for this. Drop will resonate with those who find catharsis in seeing their fears visualized on screen, and to those survivors: your stories matter. But this version of the story—told through the lens of a director whose style has become its own kind of trap—feels less like a scream and more like an echo.

You’ll watch Drop waiting for it to pop, but all it leaves behind is a faint thud.

2.5/5 — A stylish shell of a thriller that’s more mimicry than menace.