Christopher Landon’s dream job was directing Scream VII, an experience which transformed into a living nightmare following the firing of star Melissa Barrera.
Shortly after stepping down as director, fate pushed him back into the direction of Wes Craven as he received a script for a stripped-down tech thriller inspired by the director’s underrated Red Eye.
“That movie jumped to mind immediately when I read the script”, Landon told Zavvi. “I’m obviously a huge Wes Craven fan, and the Wes Craven tribute I thought I was going to make didn’t work out, so this screenplay arriving on my doorstep was kismet.
“This is the homage to Wes I was always destined to make. He’s a filmmaker who has had an enormous impact on my life, not just as a director, and to be making an original project inspired by him in an age of endless IP driven movies was so thrilling; throughout my career, I’ve always been committed to making original stories for theaters.”
After breaking out as a director with teen-focused horror hits like the Happy Death Day movies and body-swap slasher Freaky, Landon’s husband has joked that he’s finally made a “grown-up movie” with Drop. The Hitchcockian tale follows the recently widowed single mother Violet (White Lotus star Megan Fahy), whose first date since the death of her abusive husband goes wrong very quickly when she starts receiving sinister airdrops.
Soon, an unseen force in her restaurant reveals they have someone back at her house, ready to kill her young son and sister, if she doesn’t comply with their demands. Oh, and to make matters worse, she must keep this all a secret from date Henry (Brandon Sklenar), who she is instructed can’t leave her side at any cost.
“Thematically, I’ve always been drawn to horror-comedies, which are lighter in many ways, especially when they have younger protagonists in high school and college – this felt like a much more mature movie next to them. For me, this is a story primarily about abuse, not just domestic violence, but the entrenched abuse people receive online from faces you can’t see or properly respond to because they’re hidden behind an avatar.
“I felt that this was a story which really met the moment in a lot of ways, exploring the resiliency of someone who has been exposed to violence and abuse at home. I’ve unfortunately been very close to people who have been through situations like Violet, and I’ve had a front row seat to that experience, so this was subject matter that was deeply sensitive to me.
“The only way you can approach this is with honesty and empathy, so the humanity can shine through. There was no cynicism about giving her a traumatic backstory to help empower her; everybody involved in this film felt very strongly about portraying her experience in a really authentic way.
“It was a cathartic movie to make. All my movies are therapy; I’m using these stories to work through my own experiences and find a better way of understanding what’s rolling around in my head.”
For Landon, the trickiest part wouldn’t be doing justice to the delicate subject matter so much as it was sustaining tension within a story largely confined to a single table as a restaurant.
“The biggest challenge I immediately identified when reading the script wasn’t that it was a single location, but a single location where people are sat at a table and talking! For a lot of people, that’s the kiss of death, but it was a challenge I accepted, because I knew that there was a way this could be pulled off that would be strange and theatrical.
“The key was realising that this was a very subjective movie which puts you inside Violet’s head, which allowed me to implement more ambitious lighting cues and other small tricks to emphasise the moving pieces in this high-speed chess game she’s been forced to play. I love a whodunnit, and this felt like a cool way to reinvent that story, as it’s all about technology hiding in plain sight, and that gave us the chance to fully immerse the audience in the protagonist’s shoes, actively engaged in the mystery as we’re receiving the clues alongside her.”
Although set in Chicago, Drop was filmed on a soundstage in Dublin, which admittedly isn’t that unusual for a story set almost entirely within a single location. What was unique is that the director insisted on building a real, fully functioning restaurant, hired a real head chef, and even created an extensive menu.
“We wanted this to be as immersive as possible, like we were filming scenes within a real, functioning restaurant. It was fully staffed and had a menu designed specially by a real chef – although, because of the constraints of filming, we didn’t have real food at all times as people would get sick if plates were left out all day, so we had model dishes designed to replicate the ones on the menu.
“Performance is always impacted by an actor’s immersion, and if you feel like you’re in an actual restaurant, you’ll go along with it more. We had to build it from scratch because we needed absolute control of the environment; I’m a very detail-oriented person, and I get bullish about these things, because every part of this set matters.
“This is a self-contained movie, so I needed to make sure the setting restraining the characters was perfect.”
As for the dishes? The steak was the biggest favourite on set, with Sklenar taking home leftovers every day of filming (“I wouldn’t call that method acting so much as just bulking!”), but as Landon is a self-confessed unadventurous eater, there was very little of the expansive menu he managed to try out for himself.
The origins of the film came from a meeting screenwriters Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach had with their producers, who had just received mysterious airdrops, and became convinced this could be an ingeniously simple setup for a thriller. Personally, my phone settings ensure I can’t receive airdrops, and it’s the same for most people I know – but even after making Drop, Landon loves to live in the edge.
“I live dangerously; I love receiving weird s**t! It doesn’t scare me because I can decline, but it’s still a crazy idea - I only really use it with my husband to share photos, because it’s such an item of convenience in our lives that I never really see the sinister side of it.
“He hasn't started pranking me with any dark ones after making this movie though, and I’ve never airdropped any random things to strangers either. That’s not going to change!”
Drop is out now in UK cinemas.
