I am a sucker for old-school thrillers. You know, the ones where everyday people being placed in extraordinary situations with some unseen puppet master directing what they should do. I always have fun with these as I to try to put myself in the protagonist’s shoes and figure out if I could do what was asked of me or not. Well, it looks like we have another one on our hands with Blumhouse‘s Drop.

Now, Drop wasn’t exactly on my must-watch list and I actually thought about just waiting for it to become available on streaming. However, I wanted to beat the intense summer heat in the Philippines. So, I decided to duck into the cinema and give it a go. So, is Drop any good? Well, suffice to say, it is. But I don’t exactly want to say it was great because it is something you can nitpick the heck out of.

Since Drop has been out in theaters for only a week or so, I’m going to make this review a SPOILER FREE review. After all, this is a thriller and part of the fun is trying to figure out what’s happening along with the protagonist. At most, I will be talking about things that appear in the trailer but any major plot points outside of that, no. So, yeah. SPOILER FREE review incoming!

Drop focuses on Violet, a widowed single mother who is going on her first date since her husband’s passing. As she arrives at the restaurant and meets her date, she starts getting airdrop messages on her phone, stating she will have to kill her date or else someone back at her home will kill her son.

This kind of premise has been done before but this does involve modern technology. And, honestly, I do think the setup is rather gimmicky and necessary. It’s necessary as they needed a way to establish the person sending the messages were in the restaurant to escalate the tension. However, it does come off as a gimmick as the villain sends Violet memes at the start to try to get her to read the messages. Why do that instead of just getting straight to the point? I just have a funny feeling the writer received some creepy memes via airdrop one time and wrote that into a full-blown script.

One of the best things I did like about the movie is, and I know I’m going to sound really pompous by saying this, the cinematography. Blumhouse has a knack of getting their films look really interesting and Drop is no exception. They effectively use things like lighting to highlight what Violet it looking at or when she’s thinking about something. While not exactly groundbreaking and it does come off as more stylistic than anything, it does feel like a throwback to classic thrillers. That’s a good thing, by the way.

The acting overall is, well, great. Meghann Fahy plays Violet and, as the movie focuses on her, she’s practically on screen for almost the movie’s 95-minute runtime. Thankfully, she was more than up to the task of delivering an outstanding performance. You do feel for Violet as she’s put in this impossible situation. It also helps that Meghann Fahy’s chemistry with her date, played by Brandon Sklenar, is more than just decent.

I do have to commend Brandon Sklenar’s performance as well as he did a good job of playing this really down-to-earth person who wants to form a romantic connection with Violent. However, there is a certain point where he does come off as too nice that he seems too good to be true. That’s more of the writer’s fault and not his, though. The rest of the performances are pretty good but do pale in comparison with Meghann Fahy’s acting here.

The writing is also pretty tight for the most part. When I saw the start of the movie, I was ready to say they should’ve cut out the prologue portion as I did initially think it ruined what I thought should’ve been left as a mystery. However, by the end, I completely understood why they did have it in there as it does kind of bookend Violet’s journey and growth as a character. I love how they took that into account and wasn’t there to just give information about her situation.

As much as I have been praising Drop so far, I have do have several problems with it. The first two are mostly on me because, as someone who watches a whole lot of mystery movies and TV shows, I have a habit of “solving” them because I’m familiar with the tropes as well as what I know the director wants the viewer to “not notice.” So, first, the instant I saw this one person show up on screen, I immediately knew he was going to be the puppet master. I didn’t even question it! I knew it it was going to be that person!

The second is I also figured out why the puppet master wanted Violet to kill her date. Maybe it wouldn’t have been noticed by most people but it wasn’t exactly subtle. This made the twist of why all of this was put together a letdown and, honestly, unnecessarily convoluted. I also have a problem with the entire third act. Remember when I was praising the unique lighting Blumhouse usually utilizes in their movies? Well, that’s all thrown out as Drop becomes more action-y rather than thriller-y. I’m not sure what they could’ve done at this point but it was very jarring as they just dropped the suspense entirely by this point.

Even with these problems, I will say Drop is an incredible watch. It does a good job of building the suspense in the first two acts and the performances of both Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar are really good. I do know, if I re-watch the movie again, I would be able to see the plot holes, leaps of logic and even more things to nitpick. However, during this watch, I was able to suspend my sense of disbelief enough to really get into it. Call it a successful first date but I’m not sure if the second or third one will be just as satisfying.

Have you seen Drop? What did you think of it? Better question: what is your favorite thriller film that you would recommend? Let me know in the comments section below!