With films such as the surprising found footage shocker “Paranormal Activity: The Drawn”, the time looped slasher fun “Happy Deathday” and the bloody serial killer base exchange “Freaky”, Christopher Landon has developed into one of the most exciting names in the thrilling clipstream: The director has an amazing hand,, Shape massively pointed premises into entertaining-exciting films. Therefore, he was actually the perfect choice to the reins on the meta-horror franchise “Scream!” To take over!
But it just shouldn't be: a few months after Landon was announced as the “Scream 7” director, he announced his departure again because his “dream job has become a nightmare”. So what do you do when you have given one of the most popular horror series of our time? Landon found a strong answer: with “Drop – deadly date“He staged the kind of film that many fans claim that it would hardly exist – a long tradition, yet modern and original thriller, who has class and is a lot of fun!
“Drop” begins with a high -class date …
The therapist Violet (Meghann Fahy) is a single mother. After getting fashion tips from her cheeky sister Jen (violet (Violet), she dares to go back to a date for the first time in years: she meets with photographer Henry (Brandon Sklenar) in a luxury restaurant. The ambience is so beautiful, so big Violet's nerve flutter-and then she also gets aggressive messages via the Airdrop competition Digidrop Anonymous. First, she ignores the cell phone terror. But then the strange nerve saw threatens to let Violet's family kill if the concerned mother should refuse to command the murderous commands on her display or even let someone know what is happening here …
The majority of “Drop” play in the fictional top restaurant Palate located on the top floor of a high -rise building. For this purpose, the “drop” crew designed and built a more than 1,100 square meter set in order to meet the complex requirements of the rotation. And what the production designer Susie Cullen and the decorateur Kevin Downey have risen here is actually delicious: the intimidating-edle, but not uncomfortably showy restaurant has style, character and creates an enormous fall height for the violet that is daring back into dating life. In paradoxically, the palate succeeds in placing violet on the one hand thanks to clear visual lines as on a presentation plate, but at the same time causing her search for away or the origin of the danger.
In the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock
Not to mention that the palate has an input in the form of a long, ornate tunnel that has no function, except to awaken memories of the work of old genre masters such as the graphic artist Saul Bass or the regional master Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Siodmak. In general, “drop” is by far the most superior film, from Violet's velvety-red dress to the atmospheric, over-dramatized lighting, which comments on what is happening in silence but drastically. For example, when Violet dawns the scope of your dilemma and the hall light is dimmed at the same time that the illuminated decorations in the palate become a visually a cage that puts itself over it.
Landon and “Lights Out”- cameraman Marc Spicer further strengthen the mood of the thriller through a changing dynamic: At the beginning they work with a quiet camera. But the more hopeless and hectic the situation becomes, the more moving the staging becomes and the more often the image gets into trouble. Nor do they overdo it in such a way that it attacks the old -fashioned elegance of the film – after all, the increasingly aggressive masters in the picture, whipped -up commands and intimidation, and intimidation, and intimidation in the whole thing, a huge dash of modernity.
… and ends as a highly exciting thriller!
The merging of thrills after old school and current impulses also succeeds in narrative: Jillian Jacobs (“truth or duty”) & Chris Roach (“non-stop”), who is responsible for script, also organically complement the possibilities and risks of today's technologies. At the same time, they pursue the implications of the fabric without slowing down the snappy narrative flow through pronounced finger wagging: Violets gradually unveiled history and their attempts to ask for help, but effectively, show how difficult women have to free themselves from dangers:
Here it is restaurant visitors who dismiss violet despite the clear warning signals as crazy, as well as the lubrication lobes on the piano (amusing-asshol: Ed Weeks). There are the friendly, but losing waiter (pointed and losing in his own nervousness: Jeffery Self) and the solidarity bartender (beneficial-charismatic: Gabrielle Ryan), whose questions about Violet's well-being are too striking than could be done safely. So Jacobs and Roach create several foci of fire: Who threatens violet? Will Charmolzen Henry notice anything? Can Violet actually be blackmailed for the required deeds? And why was it targeted?
But still wes craven, only different than expected
Due to this abundance of sources of danger and open points, “drop” does not go out even then, if you mentally be a few steps ahead of the comfort of the cinema male. Especially since it is easy to cheer with violet: “The White Lotus” star Meghann Fahy gives it as an identification figure with red wine in her hand, which is nervous but competent. She acts so cleverly and stubbornly that you trust her to still free herself out of the bredouille – and at the same time so awkward and overwhelmed that it regularly rapidly skyrocketed our pulse.
This hustle and bustle is broken by moments of lightness, which often nourishes from Violet's reality of life between trauma, children's stuff and perseverance. This allows teasing twists and unequal-comic ingenuity-a good recipe! After all, some juicy juices are part of the hearty thriller entertainment of this kind. Wes Craven already knew that, whose “getting to know a romantic” thriller “Red Eye” is carved from similar wood. So Landon made a film in Craven's tradition – just not the one he and we originally expected with “Scream 7”.
Conclusion: “Drop-Deadly Date” is a great sign of life for a frequently and prematurely dead film genre: a canvas-filling, briskly told, lurid thriller with modern ideas, timeless, stylish implementation and a likeable main character.