Drop Trailer Breakdown: Christopher Landon On AirDrop, Slashers, And Phone Anxiety

Ping! What’s that notification? Ah yes, the trailer for Drop has just, well, dropped – marking the return of director Christopher Landon to high-concept horror territory. The Happy Death Day and Freaky director is serving up another hooky premise with his- Ping! (Sorry, can you stop that? Just trying to crack the intro to this article here.) Right, Drop’s hooky premise: it’s an AirDrop horror, in which Meghann Fahy’s Violet goes on a date that turns nightmarish, when a mysterious diner sends threatening messages to her phone that implore her to- Ping! (Ok, that’s enough. The paragraph is nearly over.) Messages that implore to kill her date. (Happy now?) Ping! Ping! Ping!

As Landon tells Empire, he’s aiming for another genre mash-up of sorts – a tense thriller, a survival horror, and a mystery all in one. “The real hook of it is, the anonymity of it. It's untraceable,” the director teases. “I immediately was taken by the simplicity of the idea. I loved how modern – and yet old-school and Hitchcock – it felt.” And like the best high-concepts, it sprang from a nugget of truth. “Our producers were at dinner and they started getting random AirDrops from somebody in the restaurant, and they couldn't figure out who it was,” Landon explains. “They spent the whole dinner trying to solve the mystery of who was sending them these AirDrops, and they could not figure it out.” The search for a mysterious, murder-minded AirDropper begins here. Here’s everything Landon teased about the Drop trailer:

Swipe right

Things begin amiably – some light-hearted ribbing here, an audible dash of Sabrina Carpenter there – as Meghann Fahy’s Violet prepares for a long-awaited date with Henry (Brandon Sklenar), encouraged by her son Toby, and her sister. “She's a single mother, we get a sense that she's quite nervous, she's getting back out onto the dating scene,” says Landon. Except, it won’t be the return to the dating scene that Violet quite hoped for. “We wanted to lull the audience into a false sense of security, of, ‘Oh, I've seen this before.’ And then it takes a hairpin turn, and begins to reveal the premise of the movie.” Dating really is hell.

Elevated tastes

The scene of Violet’s date? Fancy Chicago restaurant ‘The Bear’ – no, sorry ‘Palate’, a fine-dining eatery way up on the 39th floor. “We built a nearly 14,000 square foot restaurant on a soundstage,” Landon says of the sprawling set. “It's a functioning restaurant, for all intents and purposes. We have actual extras that were diners, we had real food, there was a lot of stuff going on to create a real space.” As the scene for Violet’s personal hell, getting the restaurant just right was paramount. “80% of the movie is in this location, and I wanted it to slowly turn into a gilded cage for Violet,” says Landon. “You realise that she is trapped in this place, and is under the control of some unseen attacker who has absolute control of her environment.” Not to mention that 39-story drop.

Flirty vibes

Things begin nicely on Violet and Henry’s date before the digital attacks kick in – and Landon is keen for you to really care about her predicament. “It’s a character-driven movie,” he promises. “It's very much about a woman who is really struggling with a pretty dark past, and having to overcome some insurmountable odds. For me, that's always the most exciting kind of movie – when you're with a character that you really fall in love with.” Next: time to twist the knife.

Deathly drops

Now we’re cooking. Drop’s central hook kicks in as Violet starts receiving threatening ‘drops’ on her phone that can only have come from someone inside the restaurant. Using AirDrop as a horror mechanism is, the director says, a chance to tap on bigger ideas. “It touches on the sense that anyone can attack you on social media, and you don't know who they are. They're untraceable, and they're constantly hidden,” he explains. It’s a feeling Landon’s experienced himself – before making Drop, he left pre-production on Scream 7 amid controversy around that film’s casting, which briefly saw him in the eye of a social media storm. “I don't think it's coincidence that the movie that I ended up making is about a person being anonymously attacked by people you can't see, which was very much my experience at the end of Scream,” he notes. “This movie suddenly became deeply personal. I think it speaks to this idea that, somehow, we have allowed ourselves to condone the idea of blindly, aggressively and anonymously attacking people we don't know.”

Starter. Main. Dessert. Murder?

Aggressive AirDrops are one thing. But what about being instructed to ‘KILL YOUR DATE’? (A clear flouting of dating convention.) “That was always one of the big hooks that grabbed me,” Landon enthuses. “Another interesting layer is, Violet has to try to understand why her date has been targeted. Is he as innocent as she thinks? She's simultaneously trying to prevent a homicide, pretend she's on a date, and solve a mystery, all at the same time. There are a lot of spinning plates for Violet in this movie.” Let alone trying to choose a dessert.

Buzzt-buzzt-buzzt

As the trailer ramps up, so too do those dread-inducing phone vibrations – which play an important function in the film. “Every time we hear that familiar buzz, it makes your stomach drop. Because you're like, ‘What do they want now?!’,” says Landon. As an audio cue, it also means less reliance on repeatedly showing audiences Violet’s phone. “At a certain point early in the movie, we abandon looking at screens and move into a different format,” he reveals. “We really rely on that sound to tell us, ‘Oh, the killer is tapping your shoulder.’ It’s a sound that we come to dread.”

Home invaders

As if Violet’s deadly date wasn’t stressful enough, she also has invaders in her home, threatening physical violence on her son and sister. Masked murderers have long been part of Landon’s horror arsenal, bringing a splash of slasher energy here. “That element of the movie is really scary,” he promises. “It's every parent's worst nightmare.” And since Violet is stuck 39 floors up, there’s not much she can do. “She's trying to figure out and neutralise a threat within the restaurant – but how do you handle a whole other threat that's embedded in your home? With your child and your sister?”

Te-kill-a shots

We get a brief glimpse at one of Violet’s attempts to bump off Henry: a poisoned tequila shot. We hear it gives you an even worse hangover than a regular tequila shot. “I've had some bad tequila in my day!” Landon laughs. “It's like pizza though, even bad tequila is still good.” Someone tell Henry that.

Take it off! Take it off!

Just as with Saturday night ITV smash The Masked Singer, Landon hopes audiences will be begging to discover ‘Who’s that behind the mask’, as Violet gets to the bottom of things. “This anonymous voice really develops into an actual character,” the director teases. “You get a sense of who they are, and that they perversely enjoy what they're doing to her. That’s another layer of the movie that I think people are going to really enjoy.” The investigation begins now.

Oh, and just in case you wondered: Settings > General > AirDrop > Receiving Off. You’re welcome.

Drop comes to UK cinemas from 11 April.