Drop

 

Director Christopher Landon

Michael Landon with his son Christopher

director on the set with actress Meghann Fahey

DROP             C                                                                                                                        USA  Ireland  (95 mi)  2025  ‘Scope  d: Christopher Landon

A modern technology horror thriller, a whodunit for the digital age meshed together with the awkwardness of the bad date genre, mostly taking place at a single location while playing out in real time, it takes advantage of some latest technology that never existed before, developing a peculiar story around this specific product, the file-sharing system AirDrop, a phenomenon introduced by Apple on their iPhones and iPads in 2013, a feature that allows you to share photos, videos, and files with other nearby iPhone users (within 30 feet) without any fuss, with no Internet connection needed, though Bluetooth is required, but if the settings are not adjusted to just your own contacts, unsolicited strangers can also gain access.  In this case, that is exactly what the villain is relying upon, hacking into an unsuspecting woman’s system like a virus, literally taking over her life in unexpected ways, all revolving around heavily abusive control issues, exploring how invasive technology can be weaponized, reminiscent of “the call is coming from inside the house” horror scenarios, where she unwittingly sets a trap for herself and then can’t find a way out.  In 2024 it was revealed that Chinese hackers had been obtaining access to supposedly private and protected information on people’s iPhones via the AirDrop service for years (Apple AirDrop leaks user data like a sieve. Chinese ...).  In the tradition of Fred Walton’s WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1976), Joel Schumacher’s PHONE BOOTH (2002), Wes Craven’s RED EYE (2005), Jaume Collet-Serra’s more recent CARRY-ON (2024), also his earlier films NON-STOP (2014) and THE COMMUTER (2018), or even as early as Anatole Litvak’s SORRY, WRONG NUMBER (1948), these films create tension around mysterious, threatening phone messages to build suspense.  In the event people are curiously interested with their phones and the outlandish things they can do, this film may carry some weight, but for those who find phone technology the bane of our existence, as our obsession with staring at phones has destroyed our social mores and the cultural fabric of our nation, as evidenced by the re-election of a President whose populism is a dangerous sham, something right out of Frank Capra’s MEET JOHN DOE (1941), where that wouldn’t have happened without our narcissistic obsession with phones and social media (Is Technology Really Ruining Teens' Lives? - The New Yorker), this film is a complete waste of time, as it’s little more than a technology-gone-wrong fantasy, perhaps best exemplified by one of the most creatively inventive, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), as opposed to the more middle of the road, Joseph Kosinski’s TRON: Legacy in 3D at IMAX (2010), which this more closely resembles.  Written by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, produced by Michael Bay, whose films tend to be pretentiously over-the-top, while directed by Christopher Landon (son of TV star Michael Landon), a specialist of mixing genres, who was a writer of one of the gay-themed episodes of BOYS LIFE 3 (2000), co-writer on D.J. Caruso’s DISTURBIA (2007), a Hitchcock REAR WINDOW-inspired crime thriller before directing a series of forgettable horror comedies, actually opting out of SCREAM 7 before making this film.  Some may find an interesting dynamic developing with one character completely caught down the rabbit hole of a horror thriller while the other is stuck in the bad date genre, edited in a choppy manner, with quick cuts, feeling overly contrived and nonsensical, yet they’re both attempting, mostly unsuccessfully, to cross that divide.     

At the center of the picture is Violet (Meghann Fahey from the anthology TV series The White Lotus, 2022 Season Two), a widow whose relationship with her abusive husband opens the movie in a shockingly violent way, a punishingly violent confrontation between a bloodied and dazed Violet and her agitated husband Blake (Michael Shea), where we never learn the source of his anger, but we do learn this is a flashback that ends badly.  Scenes of this play out early and again late in the picture, revisiting the scene with additional context, where it actually sets the stage for what follows.  But Violet has turned her life around, as she now counsels fellow domestic abuse survivors, and is about to go on her first date since the death of her husband, something she’s obviously very nervous about, having a hard time picking out the right outfit to wear, where her younger sister Jen (Violett Beane), who’s there to babysit her young bespectacled son Toby (Jacob Robinson), urges her to go with a plunging neckline, suggesting getting laid could be the answer to all her problems.  Given the gnarly images of the earlier abuse, one suspects we’re in real trouble when this is the kind of glib advice given.  After months of texting on a dating app, she has hesitantly agreed to finally meet a professional photographer, Henry (Brandon Sklenar), for dinner at a lavishly upscale penthouse Chicago restaurant at the top of a skyscraper with floor to ceiling windows, sitting at a window table overlooking the illuminated city below.  The luxuriousness is almost too perfect for words, as it just exudes exclusivity, created by production designer Susie Cullen in Ireland’s Ardmore Studios just outside Dublin, displaying an opulence that exists only in the movies, the kind of place ordinary people never see.  While sitting at the bar waiting for Henry to arrive, Violet meets another nervous man on a blind date, Richard (Reed Diamond), and offers him some encouragement.  When they’re finally seated, Henry is charming and relaxed, Drop Movie Clip - Henry Arrives (2025) YouTube (1:06), showing extreme patience and understanding when she continually frets with her phone and makes repeated exits to the ladies room, as she starts to receive creepy AirDrop messages that she initially ignores, but they steadily grow more menacing.  Richard is familiar with the technology, believing you have to be within 50 feet to generate the messages, so he helpfully looks around for possible suspects, but finds no one that stands out, Drop Exclusive Movie Clip - We Can Figure This Out (2025) YouTube (47 seconds).  However, the evening immediately takes a sharp turn for the worse when the persistent pest tells Violet to check her home security cameras, where she spots a masked intruder with a gun, receiving instructions that if she tells anyone what’s going on, or refuses to comply with what she’s ordered to do, her son and sister will die, Drop (2025) 4K - There's A Killer in Your House | Movieclips YouTube (3:44).  That is the premise for the film, as she’s caught between trying to have a good time on a date and having the worst night of her life, spending most of the date away from the table, which is bugged, as is the entire restaurant, where the nightmarish instructions only grow more threatening and controlling, forcing her to do something evil, testing the limits of how far one is willing to go, and whether murder is on the list.    

The unpleasantness has only begun, growing weirder and more twisted as things start spiraling out of control, with Violet drawn into this cruel variation on Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), where the key is accentuating the same isolated helplessness she felt from domestic abuse, the same male toxic behavior that is sadistically punishing, as she’s experienced being the victim before, with suspense shrewdly built by concealing the identity of the perpetrator.  The chaotic disorientation she feels while on a date is undercut even further by being humiliated by the awkwardness of the circumstances, as she’s surrounded by the picture of lavish extravagance that turns into claustrophobic confinement, where she’s threatened beyond belief, but can’t escape, and can’t tell anyone, though Henry, who remains a perfect gentleman throughout, suspects something is up by how easily distracted she is by the phone, which is constantly interrupting their evening.  As she looks around the room, nearly all are glued to their phones, as any number of people come into play, all of whom raise suspicions, from the weirdly off-putting yet eager and energetic waiter Matt (Jeffery Self), the circumspect hostess (Sarah McCormack), the benevolent bartender Cara (Gabrielle Ryan), the in-house lounge pianist Phil (Ed Weeks), the handsome young man who claims to be waiting for his sister (Travis Nelson), a group of high school kids out on prom night, to the bumbling older man nervous about his blind date (Fiona Browne), who unexpectedly walks out on their date, leaving him with a few choice words.  The constant interruptions may leave a few exasperated viewers, as we’re continually jolted into sinister territory that grows increasingly preposterous, becoming more luridly threatening, Drop (2025) 4K - Kill Your Date! | Movieclips YouTube (4:29).  The problem is there’s very little self-reflection in this film, which means it’s all surface level, which typically doesn’t carry films very far unless it’s an action adventure, which this isn’t until the last few minutes, instead the drama is carried by a continual stream of phone messaging, where watching a woman’s incessant texting, with the words flashing onscreen, is not exactly a picture of excitement, as no one yet has found a way to make texting cinematic, but it feeds into the short attention span of audiences today, with everything spoonfed to you at length so that nothing is left open to interpretation.  While it does reflect the modern day obsession with phones, and how frighteningly exposed that leaves us, where our safety is easily compromised, this simply isn’t anything new, with no real revelations to speak of other than the fact there are no end credits.  If it was a menacing woman behind the scenes mercilessly carrying out this kind of outlandish scheme, that might have turned some heads, as it’s something we rarely see, as psychopath-driven behavior is typically male.  The excitement level is little more than standard fare, Drop (2025) 4K - Mommy vs. Child Killer | Movieclips YouTube (4:39), where watching the pummeling of a woman by a man is not exactly what you sign up for at the movies, but carries an age-old tradition of misogynist behavior, where men are typically the bullies on the block.  While domestic violence is conveniently interwoven into the narrative, the movie never addresses this in any substantial way, as opposed to Miia Tervo’s Finnish film 2024 Top Ten List #10 The Missile (Ohjus), for instance, which makes a deep and long-lasting impression, leaving viewers with an emptiness afterwards that just doesn’t sit right.  

The Eternal Daughter

 

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER         B                                                                                   Great Britain  USA  (96 mi)  2022  d: Joana Hogg

I have a husband I neglect completely and I don’t have that much time left, and I don’t have a family beyond you.  I don’t have any children, I’m not going to have anybody to fuss over me when I’m your age.                                                                                                                        —Julie Harte talking to her mother Rosalind (both played by Tilda Swinton)

“No one wants to talk about mortality, and I regret to this day that I was never able to have that conversation with my mother,” Hogg confesses. “I was too fearful of it … I didn’t want to upset her by bringing it up.  But it would have been on her mind, and it would have maybe been a relief to have a conversation about it.  But it just didn’t happen.” (No One Wants to Talk About Mortality - The Atlantic).  From the maker of The Souvenir (2019) and THE SOUVENIR Part II (2021), with Tilda Swinton taking on a more grownup version of the role her daughter Honor Swinton Byrne played in those films, a fictionalized version of the director herself, with Tilda playing the mother, while this one features Tilda in both roles, playing mother and daughter, where you get to watch Tilda Swinton talk to Tilda Swinton in what amounts to a one-woman show.  Hogg collaborated with Swinton on her 1986 short graduation thesis film, Caprice, having known her since they were both ten year old boarding school students at the West Heath Girls’ School in 1971, the former boarding school of Princess Diana, while Hogg is also the godmother of Swinton’s daughter, each mentored by artist, poet, and filmmaker Derek Jarman, loaning Hogg her very first Super 8 camera which she used to make that first short film, only to collaborate again with Swinton on The Souvenir films, with this viewed as a finalizing coda, blurring the line between fiction and memoir.  This becomes a self-reflective memory piece on family and the limits of artistry, as sometimes the process of creating art trespasses into the personal and may have an unintended consequence, exposing family secrets that when released publicly take on a whole other life, creating open wounds that may never heal.  Martin Scorsese is an executive producer on all three films, where there is a printed conversation between them when this film was released, MARTIN SCORSESE AND JOANNA HOGG IN ....  Essentially a two woman film, with Swinton in both roles, this defies audience expectations, creating something minimalist, yet immediately recognizable, as it looks like something we’ve seen before, resembling the Gothic imagination of Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), but without the nastiness.  In fact, the two women couldn’t be more polite, which has a way of smoothing over the rough edges, but the atmospheric surroundings constantly remind us of something deeply unsettling.  With a dark and moody opening, a car arrives in the darkness, as if immersing viewers onto the foggy moors of Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (Arnold) (2011), resembling the somnambulistic quality of a Guy Maddin film, as it has that same neon green color scheme and melodramatic yet overly somber musical score, which happens to be Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, Béla Bartók - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, I YouTube (9:02), part of the background music used in Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980), though the two films use different parts of it.  Yet it’s a haunted house movie, told in the old Gothic style, with a minimum of characters onscreen, mostly a woman and her elderly mother along with their dog (Tilda Swinton’s own Springer Spaniel), where they are seemingly the only guests staying at this old gargoyle-covered countryside hotel that seems tucked under bare trees in a foreboding landscape of dim lights and everpresent fog.  Shot during the isolation of the Covid pandemic on Super 16mm by Ed Rutherford, who also shot two of her earlier works, actually filmed at Soughton Hall in Wales, a 15-bedroom Georgian estate built in 1714 which has never been used in cinema before, though judging by all the peripheral noises and an everpresent camera exploring all the nooks and crannies, this eerily empty hotel appears to be haunted, as if something is constantly lurking nearby, where the omnipresent fog raises certain expectations, creating an environment that overwhelms so completely that it amounts to a character of its own.  But this is simply the framework of a story Hogg wishes to tell, which may be her most personal effort yet, but it’s concealed within a claustrophobic environment that is as telling as anything the characters have to say, literally sweeping viewers into this cacophony of discordant sounds and ominous imagery that is always shrouded in darkness, where the bottom line is that memories haunt us, creating a unique experience that couldn’t be more eerie and ominous, as if plunging us into the depths of the subconscious, out of which emanates a film about loss or impending loss, and an exploration of grief.    

Not much actually happens in this film, requiring a great deal of patience, offering only the barest outlines of a story, and much of that is filled with benevolently perfunctory conversations between mother and daughter, where you really have to dig deep to find meaningful material here, as so much of it plays out on the surface level, leaving plenty to the imagination, yet what’s unseen seems to haunt the living.  Julie is a middle-aged filmmaker taking her elderly mother Rosalind to Wales for her birthday (the same characters in The Souvenir), booking several days in an isolated old manor, a place her mother used to frequent, as it was once owned by her Aunt Jocelyn, spending plenty of her childhood there during an evacuation from the war while attempting to escape the bombs targeting nearby Liverpool, revisiting it many times even as a young woman.  But like many of these old homes in postwar Britain, due to taxes and increased expenses, they’ve been converted to country hotels, and while they promise peace and quiet in the comforts of the countryside, they immediately feel anxious when the chilly desk clerk, Carly Sophia-Davies, has no record of their reservation, or their request for a specific room overlooking the garden, instead she seems completely indifferent, having difficulty finding any available room, claiming the hotel is full of guests, even though they seem to be the only ones there.  Having the dining room to themselves, and the full run of the place, the clerk is equally disinterested about Julie’s request to close the windows and shutters in the rooms above them that seem to be continually banging from the wind, keeping her up all night, as she roams the empty corridors, with the clerk claiming none of the other guests have complained.  Immediately we question our perception of reality, as there’s obviously something going on behind the scenes, with the deadpan clerk absurdly adding a bit of levity to an overly somber film, as she seems constantly annoyed and reluctant to accommodate any of Julie’s requests, caught up, apparently, in her own personal struggles, occasionally seen arguing with a partner that is picking her up in a red sports car with the techno music cranked up as they are leaving the grounds.  While she brought her mother to an old familiar place in hopes it would trigger her memories for the film she wants to make, with each room reminding Rosalind of personal anecdotes she would never have thought of otherwise, she hopes to memorialize her mother before she dies by secretly recording their conversations.  Feeling guilty that this is done without asking consent, Rosalind is reluctant to share, finding herself easily distracted, not really providing the answers she is looking for, carrying a white plastic bag of letters and photographs that she intends to go through, while Julie spends her time working in the attic, the only place with a reliable Wi-Fi signal, making no headway at all on writing a screenplay, obscured by her own challenges, as she’s continually kept up all night, left ruminating on questions swirling in her head about the ghostly events that surround her in a lonely hotel without guests, becoming a film about the creative process and the emotional turmoil it involves.  Much of this is shot through mirror reflections, or long shots down empty hallways, with a spectral figure seen peering through the window, where it’s more suggestive than real, offering various versions of the self, never really addressing any of Rosalind’s concerns openly, as memories aren’t always clear and concise, and can feel muddled, as if lost in a haze, with only moments of clarity.  Nonetheless, Julie only wishes for her mother’s happiness, growing deeply distressed when she learns of so many sorrowful recollections, with memories of war and tragic loss, including a miscarriage, leaving her filled with regret, unaware of the heavy weight she’s been carrying, which may explain her writer’s block, growing deeply uncomfortable, a manifestation of something a younger version of her character Julie says in SOUVENIR II, “I don’t want to see life as it was.  I want to see life as I imagine it to be.”  Filtering someone else’s life through our own existential prism, it only accentuates what we don’t know or understand about those we love, as reality often conflicts with our ideas of the truth.             

While this film made plenty of Best of the Year lists, listed at #3 by Reverse Shot, Best Films of 2022 Reverse Shot, and #5 by the Film Comment poll, Film Comment Announces 2022 Best-of-Year Lists, it’s not an easy watch, particularly finding something substantive out of it, as it definitely loses something if not seen in theaters, where it might otherwise feel overly dark, with so much hidden underneath the tapestry of spooky images, borrowing heavily from the British horror tradition, including Jacques Tourneur’s fog-shrouded NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), Jack Clayton’s superb adaptation of the Henry James ghost story The Turn of the Screw in The Innocents (1961), Herbert Wise’s ghost story THE WOMAN IN BLACK (1989), and of course Stanley Kubrick’s haunted house thriller THE SHINING (1980), which was shot in England.  The use of horror recalls the deeply buried resentments in Ingmar Bergman’s Bergman, Two from the 70's: Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten) (1978), featuring Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann as mother and daughter, veering into shockingly unexpected emotional outbursts, while this is a portrait of Hogg’s relationship with her own mother, who died while she was editing the film, leaving her plagued by guilt, associating the film with her death, making this her version of Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie (2015).  Essentially a film about women whose problems manifest as failures of expression, suppressed desires, and thwarted ambitions, the idea began back in 2008 when Hogg was planning a film about her relationship with her mother, but she was too close at the time, unnerved by the idea of poking around exploring very painful memories, but the passage of time allowed her to consider a different way of approaching the subject, knowing she would make a film about it one day, recalling “We often went on trips together to stay at hotels, sometimes near relatives, and so it was very directly taken from that experience with her.”  Swinton is understated throughout, providing the needed believability in each character, a stabilizing force in stark contrast to the impressionistic maze of Gothic horror that is a constant visual motif, with suggestions of a supernatural presence hovering nearby, which may be a metaphor for death, and while nothing jumps out of the dark striking fear in anyone’s heart, the horror of memory is everpresent here.  While Julie tries her best to care for her mother, she is shocked at her mother’s reactions to a return to what was a family estate, flooding her memories with an overwhelming rush of sad emotions, leaving Julie disheartened, wondering what she’s done bringing her there, but her mother is more firmly grounded, reminding her daughter, “That’s what rooms do.  They hold these stories.”  From an imagination perspective, this film is wonderfully impressionistic, offering fleeting memories, but also long-forgotten correspondences, worn-out paperbacks, long walks with the dog, and formal dining in an empty room, with only four things on the menu, catered to by the disinterested desk clerk who always seems to intrude at the exact wrong moment, invariably interrupting their train of thought, though they always insist they are having a “very lovely time,” leaving things in a state of paralysis, as if stuck in time.  The birthday dinner itself is surreal, with Julie meticulously wanting things done a certain way, becoming anxiously exact, but when the moment arrives the film swerves in a different direction, altering the look of reality, challenging our perceptions, and infusing a different understanding of the mother/daughter relationship which is at the heart of the film.  It’s clear that you can know someone without really knowing them, as evidenced by this family home that was once filled with importance and life, but transformed over time to an empty vessel, a decaying remnant of what it once was, where the physical space of the building is a ghostly presence.  Looking upon our pasts, and the people that matter to us, an emotional chasm exists between how we remember the past and the present, with all its complications.  Memory is fluid, as it comes and goes, never straightforward, which may explain the multiple shots of mirror reflections, working with more close-ups, allowing the characters’ reactions to be observed in greater detail, adding an existential element, and a different version of autobiographical filmmaking, as there’s something unknowable about this hotel and its inhabitants, and a tremendous gulf between the conversations we would like to have with our mothers and daughters, and the ones we actually end up having.