Unlike the heroine in his tightly wound new tech thriller Drop, director Christopher Landon hasn’t received any threatening AirDrops.
“I mean, I got a dick pic once,” he tells Inverse.
That, unfortunately, is one of the more commonplace things someone might get digitally “dropped” on their phone with features that allow users to wirelessly share images and files. And if someone were to accidentally leave that feature on so anyone can “drop” things to them, a dick pic might be the least of their worries.
That’s the premise of Drop, a tight 90-minute thriller starring Meghann Fahey as a widowed mother who, while on a first date, starts receiving strange drops that take a turn for the sinister when it’s revealed that the anonymous “dropper” has a man in her house. Soon, she’s being blackmailed into murdering her date to save her son’s life. It’s a pretty far-fetched premise, but it’s one that has a surprising real-life inspiration, Landon reveals.
“They spent the whole night trying to figure out who was sending them, and they never solved the mystery.”
“The whole genesis of this movie was because our producers [Brad and Cameron Fuller] were at a restaurant on vacation and they started getting mysterious AirDrops from someone,” Landon says. The AirDrops were mostly benign memes, not unlike the ones that Fahey’s Violet receives at the start of Drop. Unlike in Violet’s situation, they never morphed into threats, but Brad and Cameron Fuller never found out who was responsible.
“They spent the whole night trying to figure out who was sending them, and they never solved the mystery,” Landon says. But they discovered, ‘This is a great premise for a movie.’ And so, here we are.”
Inverse spoke with Landon about the high-stakes premise of Drop, crafting the unique high-rise restaurant that serves as its location, and why the movie wouldn’t have happened without White Lotus.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
What was your reaction when Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach's script landed on your desk?
So the producers, Brad and Cameron Fuller, they approached me. I had worked with Brad a long time ago on another project, and he said, "I have this script, and it's a first draft, but I think there's something really exciting here." And it's funny, because I'm a writer, and sometimes scripts are really hard to read. And this one, I just flew through it. I think I read the whole thing in less than an hour. And I called them immediately, because I felt like it was definitely a movie.
Your biggest hits, like Happy Death Day and Freaky, are projects you’ve directed and written. Were you anxious about taking on another person's script?
No, I wasn't anxious at all. I was lucky enough to start on the ground floor, I was able to work with Chris and Jill a lot, so there was real collaboration there. For me, it's not about having to direct my own work, it's about directing something that excites me and challenges me, and I really felt those things.
Speaking of being on the ground floor, this movie takes place in, I feel, an absurdly high-up restaurant.
It's a very tall building.
Were there any challenges to filming a single-location movie?
Absolutely. First, there was the challenge, which was an exciting challenge, of designing the restaurant and wanting to really make sure that it felt like a character. But one of the biggest challenges is the fact that we filmed the movie in Dublin, and there are no high rises in Dublin. So it was a big logistical challenge in terms of creating the restaurant, creating the environment outside the windows for the restaurant, having to go to Chicago and shoot a ton so we could have that background element, especially for the third act of the movie. There were some big challenges, but they were all kind of exciting and fun too.
“She's that person that if you bumped into her in a bar and you just would become best friends with her.”
I want to talk about casting Meghann Fahy, who is excellent in this movie, and has a big job of carrying the entire thing. How did you know that she was perfect for this?
Like most people, I fell in love with her after I saw Season 2 of White Lotus. I thought she was the most compelling and captivating character in that whole season. And I was so impressed with all of the layers that she had built into that character and how much she was doing sitting across from other people at tables. I felt like I could really sense her range as an actor. But also, she has this rare quality, she is beautiful but she has a warmth and a likability and a grounded sort of nature. She's that person who if you bumped into her in a bar, you just would become best friends with her. And I wanted that for Violet. I wanted that accessibility for her. Even though she's dealing with a lot of personal stuff, I still wanted the audience to be like, "Wow, I really like this girl."
Speaking of the personal stuff that she deals with, the threat of domestic violence and her trauma from it are interwoven throughout the film. This being a thriller, how did you approach it sensitively?
Absolutely. Yeah. I have someone very close to me who was in a really violent relationship, and so I unfortunately had a front row seat to that experience. I drew a lot from that. And it was a really delicate subject, but I also saw it as an opportunity to speak to the subject. What's interesting about Violet is that at the top of the movie, you see that she's a psychiatrist and she's working with other victims of domestic violence. And what you come to find out is that even though she is helping these other women, she hasn't fully embraced herself and her past and reconciled a lot of things.
And then to some degree, I think she feels like she's a bit of a fraud. That she's using this job and this position as a front to try and convince herself that she's someone she is not. And I think over the course of the movie, when she's faced with these impossible odds, she actually discovers that she is that person. That she does have that strength.
And for me, that was a really powerful message. I love to “Trojan Horse” really difficult thematic elements into movies that are very entertaining, you, because it's a great way to get people to talk about stuff after the fact. And so I hope that's what people are able to take away.
It grounds the movie too, because the premise is a little bit out there. She receives a lot of drops from this anonymous blackmailer, but she's still kind of in that victim mentality, and it makes her almost more, not compliant, but—
Yeah, you feel like she's almost got like a beacon that's almost calling that to her.
A lot of your other films, like Happy Death Day and Freaky, have a sort of, "What if a slasher were another thing?" And Drop kind of breaks away from that. Were you resistant to being pigeonholed?
Yeah, I think every filmmaker wants to challenge themselves and they want to step out of something that they're known for, because you can get pigeonholed. It's not to say that I still don't love that stuff, I really do. This project came to me at a very specific time in my life, where I was emotionally searching for something a bit darker and less of a genre mashup.
“I think every filmmaker wants to challenge themselves and they want to step out of something that they're known for.”
And I was really drawn to Chris and Jillian's script and how straightforward it was and how simple the concept was, but how much you could build inside of that. And that is something that I always try to look for, even if it is a horror comedy. It's that sort of, "What is that really interesting hook that sinks into you and then you can build so much inside of it?" And this had that for sure.
