The silly techno-thriller 'Drop' isn't quite Hitchcock. Call it 'Strangers on a Text Chain'

“Drop,” the latest sitcom-y slasher by manager Christopher Landon (“Happy Death Day,” “Freaky”) is an overzealous techno-thriller astir a unsighted day that gets deadly by dessert. Violet (Meghann Fahy), a azygous ma and a home unit survivor, is nervously gathering her online match, Henry (Brandon Sklenar), astatine an upscale Chicago edifice connected apical of a skyscraper. Her accent multiplies erstwhile an chartless alien pesters her with concealed air-dropped telephone messages, anonymous texts that tin lone beryllium sent wrong a 50-foot range. Someone adjacent is sending Violet a superior threat: Flirt with Henry oregon they’ll execution her son.

The contained setup is clever successful an Alfred Hitchcock-meets-ChatGPT benignant of way. The crippled is silly and the climax is astatine erstwhile excessively fast, excessively dilatory and excessively ludicrous. Really, determination are excessively galore things connected the menu. Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach’s publication is variously a romanticist comedy, a send-up of good eating and a lens into abusive relationships. It besides serves a batch of reddish herrings.

Things unfastened poorly with a country of Violet getting battered by her ex, Blake (Michael Shea). The mode the carnal battle is changeable is conscionable awful, miserable stuff. A footwear to her ribs reverberates crossed the theater. Later, Violet is hurled crossed a array and the camera comes with her, skidding down to the floor. There’s an thought successful present astir resilience. Mostly, it’s a sour note.

Briefly, “Drop” plays similar a TV drama, too, arsenic it establishes Violet’s vocation arsenic a virtual therapist and introduces her son, Toby (Jacob Robinson, a 6-year-old Irish TikTok star), and her quirky sister Jen (Violett Beane), who breezes into connection wardrobe proposal and immoderate needed comic relief. Jen puts Violet successful a dynamite red-velvet tuxedo jumpsuit that volition nonstop immoderate fashionistas scurrying retired of the movie and into the mall.

The code changes again erstwhile Violet arrives astatine Palate, the wanly named edifice wherever astir of the enactment takes place. (For my money, the full happening should person been acceptable present — each country that isn’t is simply a groaner.) Once Violet tiptoes done Palate’s disorienting entrance, she discovers a boozy big oasis that’s posh and tasteful and yet someway unctuously personality-free. Kudos to the accumulation decorator Susie Cullen for nailing a decor I tin lone picture arsenic Mixology Theme Park.

We’ll travel to cognize Palate’s galore corners portion Violet’s atrocious day plays out, astir successful existent time. There’s the bath wherever she ducks to furiously substance the slayer retired of Henry’s sight, the slatted walls that framework her similar a cage, the lounge wherever the bartender (Gabrielle Ryan Spring) pours liquid courage, and the soft wherever a tipsy and obnoxious instrumentalist (Ed Weeks) tinkles the ivories to get her attention. “ ’Baby Shark,’ ” she requests, hoping he’ll permission her alone.

The champion scenes, however, instrumentality spot astatine the meal array wherever Henry wonders wherefore she’s sabotaging their meet-up. The chatty waiter (Jeffery Self, hilarious) natters connected astir the candied ginger successful the duck crockery portion Violet stares helplessly astatine information footage of a masked antheral successful her house. Honestly, I hardly gave a caramelized fig astir wee Toby being held hostage. I conscionable enjoyed the date, peculiarly the agitation successful Fahy’s empathetic look that gets misinterpreted arsenic romanticist desperation.

With her glassy bluish eyes and her chemoreceptor flushed beet-red, Fahy, charming successful her archetypal pb role, is truthful vibrato with accent that it took a bushed to admit her from her breakout show successful “White Lotus” arsenic the 2nd season’s blithe, affluent woman who prefers buying to therapy. Here, her quality adjacent is a therapist, not that that ever factors into the script.

Meghann Fahy successful the movie “Drop.”

(Universal Pictures)

Like astir radical nowadays, Violet and Henry assertion to beryllium ambivalent astir modern technology, adjacent arsenic a dating app has brought them together. “Drop” is simply a terrific advertisement for leaving your astute telephone astatine home. Whether successful Violet’s manus oregon buzzing connected the table, it sabotages her quality to converse; it’s an exaggeration of however a instrumentality intended to link radical wedges them apart. Even erstwhile Violet and Henry bash connect, they’re often talking astir things they’ve seen connected their phones. (Badly lit erotic pics, for one.) They’re stuck successful a simulacrum of intimacy.

The tech-savvy villain is sitting determination adjacent capable to spot everything Violet does. Plus determination are integer eyes everywhere. Thankfully, we don’t walk that overmuch clip staring astatine her phone. The harassing messages are slapped onscreen successful big, ridiculous lettering — “Your telephone is cloned,” “Your lad volition die,” positive a notation to Billy Joel.

So acold I’ve yet to spot immoderate movie fig retired however to integrate the dull enactment of staring astatine a tiny achromatic rectangle into thing worthy of the screen. Landon’s attack looks a spot excessively overmuch similar a billboard oregon a meme, but I deliberation he’s connected the close way to beryllium trying thing expressionistic that circles backmost astir to silent-movie aesthetics. If you deliberation this looks cool, you should instantly ticker F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans,” a 1927 tear-jerker astir different slayer day wherever where the on-screen substance “Couldn’t she get drowned?” sinks into a murky lake.

One aggravating ocular tic is that astir of the antheral characters are photocopies of each other, a stack of handsome men with sandy brownish goatees. I can’t beryllium the lone idiosyncratic who initially mistook Henry and Blake arsenic the aforesaid feline and assumed the brutal opening flashback was really a flash-forward. For clarity’s sake, couldn’t 1 of them person shaved?

Maybe — maybe — the misdirection is connected purpose. I’m dubious. In different pivotal moment, Violet scribbles a connection that seems to beryllium a large woody according to the tense and pounding score. But adjacent successful a close-up, I couldn’t marque retired what it read.

Otherwise, the cinematography is fantastic with melodramatic lighting and playful flourishes: slow-motion sparklers connected a day cake, aerial shots of panna cotta, an introductory credits series successful which vino and whiskey glasses detonate successful mid-air. There are scenes that spotlight our leads by fading the remainder of the edifice into the dark, and a dazzler wherever everything but Violet vanishes into inky blackness arsenic the camera shoots consecutive up similar a spooked squid. Maybe it heard Self’s waiter hyping the coconut calamari. More apt this middling thriller conscionable needs a decorative garnish.