Last year, there was a movie called It Ends With Us. The film overcame lukewarm critical reviews to achieve massive box office success, most likely because it was made and marketed as a shocking and empowering portrayal of domestic abuse and how to move past it. However, the film and its message were both quickly drowned out by an ongoing legal shitstorm, with Blake Lively and her costar/director Justin Baldoni throwing all sorts of heinous accusations against each other.

Incidentally, Baldoni hired Melissa Nathan, the same PR crisis manager that Johnny Depp hired during his notorious divorce proceedings against Amber Heard. It’s the second verse of the same song: Two people waging all-out war against each other, trying to recruit literally everyone else into acting as pawns to fight on their behalf. I said it for Heard/Depp and I’ll say it again for Lively/Baldoni: I want nothing to do with their bullshit, fuck ’em both.

It’s a damn shame, though. We could definitely use a film that talks about the trauma of domestic abuse, preferably in a way that’s clever and entertaining while giving such a serious issue its due. Maybe the film could be directed by someone with a long proven history of movies with capable and developed female leads. Hell, maybe it could star a male actor from It Ends With Us who isn’t a womanizing piece of shit, give him a chance to prove himself without all that baggage.

Enter Drop.

The script for this one comes from Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, the writing team who previously brought us such Blumhouse turds as Truth or Dare and the Fantasy Island remake. Then again, those were both directed by that Jeff Wadlow hack. This time, the script got handed off to Christopher Landon, the director who previously helmed Freaky and the Happy Death Day movies before studio executive fuckups drove him away from the upcoming Scream 7. Oh, and he also produced Heart Eyes. As that filmography demonstrates, Landon has a long and accomplished history of making unconventional yet solid horror films, and a talent for finding remarkable new talents to play strong female leads.

This time, it’s Meghann Fahy in the role of Violet Gates. She’s introduced to us as a broken and bloodied mess, forced into holding a gun to her psychotic husband. Cut to a few years later, and Violet is a widowed single mother, working as a counselor to help other survivors of domestic abuse. And after three months of talking online with some guy, she’s finally ready to meet him in person.

Henry Campbell (Brandon Sklenar) is a local photographer, and he seems like a pretty solid guy all around. So they meet up at some pretentious luxury restaurant with a penthouse view of Chicago, the kind of place where everyone in attendance has more money than sense.

Things quickly go awry when Violet starts getting weird anonymous memes and disturbing text messages. The long and short of it is that there’s a masked gunman in Violet’s home, so her son and her little sister (Toby and Jen, respectively played by Jacob Robinson and Violett Beane) are effectively being held hostage. Someone in the restaurant is closely watching Violet’s every move, tracking her cell phone, watching all the cameras, listening in on planted microphones. The text messages are dictating Violet’s every move, demanding her silence, forcing her into taking harmful action against her date.

Of course the major question is who’s sending these texts and why. But there’s also the question of who Henry really is and why anyone would want him dead. Who are all these people in the restaurant and what are they all doing on their phones? How can Violet ask for help, and who among these strangers can she trust?

While I’m loathe to get too far into spoilers, I do feel compelled to point out that with everything he had going on at present, Henry was a stone-cold idiot for meeting a stranger he met online in a place he’s never been before. That’s all I’m gonna say. And it’s my only major complaint against what’s otherwise a solidly constructed suspense thriller plot.

The film benefits from simplicity. This isn’t some huge labyrinthine plot with multiple competing factions and agendas. The grand design isn’t anything global or paranormal in scope. The characters are all forced into complicated situations and it’s not always clear what they’ll do, but it’s immediately clear why they’re doing it. And that makes for a stellar suspense thriller.

We’ve got strategically timed reversals and reveals. We’ve got shot compositions and camera tricks and deceptive cuts to ramp up the tension. We’ve got lighting effects to put us in the lead character’s frame of mind. Hell, we’ve even got an aggressively stylized opening credits sequence like nobody does anymore outside of a James Bond picture. It all adds up to a modern film made in a retro Hitchcock style.

Best of all, the film’s themes further add to the general atmosphere of paranoia. Naturally, modern technology plays a huge part of that. It’s easy and scary enough to be a few dozen stories up in the air and surrounded by total strangers. It’s even scarier to think that any of those strangers could be doing or saying or planning literally anything behind their smartphones. All of this makes it hard enough to connect with another person on any kind of romantic or emotional level, never mind while somebody is in mortal peril and in need of urgent help.

But of course the real centerpiece here is the domestic abuse angle. That oppressive feeling of being completely and helplessly at the mercy of another person. The presence of a monster who dictates everything you say and do and you can’t ask anyone for help without the risk of bodily harm or someone else getting hurt. Gotta say, using our anonymous psychopath as a metaphor for a domestic abuser is quite a bold move. I’m afraid I can’t speak to how appropriate or tasteful the portrayal is, but it makes the point in a clever and captivating way.

Unfortunately, the cast is rather hit-and-miss. Fahy is of course the standout, turning in an elegantly balanced portrayal of a woman who’s suffering terribly and can’t let anyone know it. Sklenar doesn’t fare nearly as well, as he’s supposed to be playing a charismatic enigma, but he does well enough with what he has. I can’t credit the actor here, but the mastermind does a respectable job chewing the scenery with the big reveal of what’s really going on.

In the supporting cast, Gabrielle Ryan is nicely charming in the thankless role of the bartender. Reed Diamond is a seasoned character actor and does a passable job as another single guy on a blind internet date.

But then we have the comic relief. Jeffrey Self plays the waiter, and this just happens to be his first shift. He’s an anxious and obnoxious try-hard who’s obviously more interested in his career as a wannabe comedian. And he sucks at that too. This guy is worthless.

Much as I enjoy and respect the claustrophobic setting of the film, I wish we could’ve spent more time at home with Jen and Toby. Beane is infinitely more capable as a comic relief (and her action chops are well-practiced after so much time in the Arrowverse) and her chemistry with Fahy is adorable, but she barely gets any screentime. Also, for how crucial Toby is to the plot and motivation of our main character, he could’ve been replaced with a cat and it wouldn’t have made a difference. I know he’s a pre-school kid, but Toby has zero agency and no presence whatsoever, it’s a waste.

Overall, Drop is a nicely effective potboiler. Much as I dislike the comic relief, the presentation is remarkable, and the central performances are compelling. It’s a suspense thriller with modern and relevant themes, presented with a timeless old-school style.

I had a good time with this one. Happy to recommend it.