Drop - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

I love a good Thriller. I love a good horror movie. Smash those sibling genres together and you’ve set yourself up for a pretty great time. Director Christopher Landon has made that a staple of his career between two Happy Death Day films, the cleverly entertaining Freaky, and a writing credit on the hilarious horror rom-com Heart Eyes. When his takeover of the Scream franchise so dramatically fell apart for numerous reasons beyond his control, he turned his attention to the Hitchcockian contained thriller Drop written by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach. Unfortunately, contained thrillers are only as interesting as their location and when the film is so busy telegraphing its tricks, it puts too much weight on the cast to drum up the excitement. 

Our film focuses on Meghann Fahy as abuse survivor therapist Violet Gates. A survivor of her own abusive marriage, she’s finally ready to get back out there and start dating and professional photographer Henry (Brandon Skelnar) seems like the perfect gentleman for the occasion. Dressed to the nines, she arrives at one of Chicago’s swankiest highrise restaurants. But then the drop messages start dinging her phone. At first, it’s just bizarre memes, but then they become personal… and deadly. As someone in the restaurant is sending Violet the messages, a masked man stalks her home ready to kill her sister and her young son unless she does everything she’s told to do. 

Contained Thrillers like Phonebooth or Red Eye, these films are only as interesting and exciting as their locations. But they all suffer from the same problem, once we leave that little space, the films tend to fall apart. Even an Action flick like Speed loses a lot of momentum once they get off that out-of-control bus. The other hiccup with this sort of Thriller is the “who” - who is the person putting our main characters through this situation, and why are they doing it? Unfortunately, Drop doesn’t manage either of those essential plot beats all that well. 

While it’s a tantalizing premise, the restaurant location leads to a very limited selection of suspects for the audience to ponder. Anyone eating a meal or having a drink could be the person. The key mistake for Drop is only about five of those individuals have a speaking role, so it’s incredibly easy to narrow the pool. I had the individual pegged immediately because the red herring characters were even more obvious. So with that out of the way, it comes down to what sort of terrifying tasks are being asked of Violet to perform and sadly those don’t amount to a whole lot either. Ultimately Drop is a movie about a woman stuck on her phone made for an audience who watches films with their phones out.  

Credit where it’s due, Meghann Fahy does everything she can to ground the film delivering one heck of a performance. While I thought a lot of the plot cheaps out on the abuse survivor aspect, she still delivers that character’s personal weight all the way through to the end. Brandon Skelnar does what he can do in a frustratingly underwritten character. A central figure to the proceedings, he’s often left sitting at the table like an amiable attractive paperweight. It’s the sort of role that anyone could have played and he frustratingly doesn’t get to do anything to stand out.

Drop is just one of those decent enough filler films that will entertain for its runtime but isn’t altogether memorable either. We’ve seen this sort of movie enough times now that there were very few surprises. It’s basically Red Eye in a restaurant only without a compelling villain. I didn’t hate it, I’ll admit it’s a decent little flick, but I wanted more from this meal beyond a tantalizing appetizer. Opening in theaters on April 11th, I had the choice of seeing Drop or Warfare, the latter won and now that I've seen Drop I know I made the right call.  

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Drop falls onto physical media with a two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital release from Universal/SDS. The 4K is pressed on a Region Free BD66 with a Region Free BD50 serving up the 1080p offerings. The discs are housed in a standard black two-disc case with identical slipcover artwork. The included digital code is Movies Anywhere compatible and should port to all connected services.

Drop makes the jump to 4K UHD with rather pleasing results. A modern film shot digitally with a whole slew of CGI trickery, the visuals land well in 2160p Dolby Vision. Slipping over to the included 1080p Blu-ray, my eyes didn’t see that massive leap in overall clarity and image detail from 1080p to 2160p, but the improvements on 4K come down to the subtleties. There are a lot of shadowy spots and some dramatic lighting schemes that I felt come off better on this 4K disc. There’s a scene when Violet runs to the bathroom and the images of what she’s seeing on her phone appear behind her, I thought that looked better on the 4K. Likewise, all of the projected messages that appear over the entire screen have a stronger glow and weight than the 1080p disc with a stronger sense of depth. Ultimately, that falls on the shoulders of the solid Dolby Vision grade. The HDR I thought added a better range of colors for this location's soft yellow/orange lighting scheme. I felt skin tones looked a little more human and healthy and when we got those splashes of color, the primaries popped a little stronger. Overall a healthy 4K transfer.

Where this film pulls some weight is in the sound design. I was really impressed at how well the Atmos carried the mix. We get a lot of side and rear channel activity, but it’s subtle sort like how you would normally occasionally hear pieces of someone else’s conversation if you were at a restaurant. Little clinks of glasses and cutlery kick in the same way. So it's not always aggressive but it feels natural and real to the moment. A lot of the mix is a Front/Center affair, but heights get some nice atmospheric attention and really pick up in the final act. Throughout, the dialog is clean and clear without any issues there. The Bear McCreary score is a nice moody accompaniment to the film and provides a lot of the LFE rumble through most of the film. All around a fine mix, not a showstopper, but it works for this flick.

On the bonus features front, we have what passes for standard filler material these days but somehow gains the “Collector’s Edition” banner. The only thing of weight is the commentary track with Christopher Landon who makes some interesting points and observations about how and why certain pieces play out as they do, even if I still think it’s a pretty predictable course to take. The rest is the sort of EPK filler you’d see pass for movie marketing in those pre-show reels while you wait for a different movie to start. You’re getting barely 14 minutes of content after the commentary.

4K UHD & Blu-ray

• Audio Commentary with Christopher Landon
• A Recipe for Thrills: Making Drop (HD 6:43)
• A Palate for Panic (HD 4:32)
• Killer Chemistry (HD 3:36)

Overall Drop isn’t a terrible Contained Thriller, just an undercooked one. At barely 96 minutes it moves fast but that undercuts a lot of character development and unfortunately makes some plot twists and character reveals that much more obvious. Meghann Fahy is the star of the show and she holds up well for what she’s given to work with. On 4K UHD, the film scores a pretty basic but appealing A/V package with a Dolby Vision HDR transfer and a solid Atmos track to match. Extras are pretty flimsy outside of the commentary so don’t expect much there. Ultimately this is one of those where I can see some folks enjoying it, but not remembering it for long after the credits roll. Worth A Look