What would you do if you were presented with two dire options: Murder your date or let your son die?
“Drop,” out in theeaters April 11, explores a woman faced with that exact conundrum. Starring Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar, the movie follows one woman’s attempt to navigate a nightmare situation.
“Basically this single mom — widowed mother — is going out for the first time on a date and so she’s already really nervous,” Fahy said on TODAY April 10. “And then she gets there and she starts getting these very sinister drops and she then has to, you know, either kill her date or lose her son and her sister. The stakes become immediately very high.”
What’s the premise of ‘Drop’?
Single, widowed mom Violet (Fahy) finally decides to go on a first date, hinting that her last relationship — which resulted in the birth of her son Toby (Jacob Robinson) — wasn’t healthy.
With her sister, Jen (Violett Beane), babysitting Toby for the night at Violet’s house, Violet embarks on her date at The Palate, an upscale restaurant on the top floor of a tall building.
Violet gets a text from her date, a photographer named Henry (Brandon Sklenar), informing her he will be late, so she grabs a glass of wine at the bar first. There, she meets friendly bartender Cara (Gabrielle Ryan), flirty pianist Phil (Ed Weeks) and Richard (Reed Diamond) — a nervous man waiting for his blind date to arrive.
She receives a meme over Digi Drop, the movie’s version of AirDrop, but she declines it as Henry finally arrives, camera bag in tow, claiming if he leaves it in the car someone might break in to try and steal it.
The two are seated and begin their date, with Violet explaining that she needs to keep her phone on the table in case Jen or Toby needs anything from her. Henry is completely fine with this, even giving her a hockey puck he bought as a gift for Toby.
Their date goes smoothly, until Violet starts receiving multiple Digi Drops that get darker and darker in their content. She brings her concerns to Henry, but he says it’s probably someone just pranking her. He explains you have to be within 50 feet of someone to send them a Digi Drop so he walks around the restaurant, measuring how far the prankster could be. He concludes that they must be in the dining room with them.
Despite this, the date remains in good spirits until Violet gets a message over Digi Drop from an unknown user called “Let’s Play.” They tell her to check her security cameras, which she does, seeing that there’s a masked man in her home with a gun and a silencer.
She then gets a text from Let’s Play telling her to keep her mouth shut and that her phone is cloned so they can see everything she does. They tell her if she calls the cops, Toby dies.
Let’s Play tells Violet that if she wants Toby to live, she needs to steal and destroy the SD card from Henry’s camera, which she does — pretending she lost her watch to distract him and flushing the crushed SD card down the toilet. Before she does, however, she sees some of the photos stored on it, which are of politicians and wire transfer statements.
Then, she’s given a much harder task: she’s instructed to kill Henry if she wants Toby to live. Let’s Play secretly stashed a vial of poison in the bathroom for her to use, which they explain will kill Henry “quickly and painlessly.”
When Violet says she can’t kill someone, Let’s Play responds that she’s killed someone before — she can do it again.
Very aware of all the cameras on her and the bugs at her table and in the bathroom, she tries to determine who in the restaurant it could be, but to no avail. During all of this, Henry senses something is wrong and tries to leave the date. After being informed that Toby will die if Henry leaves, she convinces him to stay with a kiss.
Henry stays and, despite the life or death situation going on, they are able to bond, with Henry sharing that he’s worked for the mayor for five years — although he doesn’t seem happy about it.
When Henry asks her why she’s a therapist, Violet explains that she works with abuse survivors as she’s a survivor herself and wants to help others now. She says the trauma of abuse rears its head at different times, explaining away some of her weird behavior that evening.
Over the course of the date, Violet struggles with the ethics of killing Henry, trying different tricks to secretly let others know her son is in danger — including secretly informing Phil, but this only gets him killed too.
In response, Let’s Play has the masked man in her home attack Jen, knocking her out with the butt of his gun. The masked man then picks Toby up and locks him in his room.
Seeing how truly serious the situation is, Violet decides to kill Henry, convincing him to do a shot with her to reset.
Who’s behind ‘Let’s Play’ in Drop?
On her way to the bar to grab two tequila shots, Violet unknowingly knocks her purse over. Out spills the watch she had pretended to lose.
At the bar, she tries to pour the poison into one of the shots but gets a message telling her she must pour it at the table. So, she declines the limes bartender Cara offers her and heads back to the table.
There, Henry confronts her about the watch that fell out of her purse, asking her why she’s lying to him. The two have a heartfelt conversation about being honest and genuine. Violet admits to staying in an abusive relationship even after her son was born. She says she is still stuck in it at times, revealing she once watched Blake almost kill Toby as she just sat there.
“And that’s the kind of mother I am,” she says, to which Henry confides that in the past, he’s found himself in a messed-up situation that hurt good people for a long time and he still feels the guilt.
Henry tells Violet that abusive people will make you feel guilty, even if they are dead. Violet tells Henry he’s a good guy, but still pretends she forgot the limes for their shots. When Henry goes to grab them, she poisons his shot.
Henry asks if they can toast to “hope,” which they do. The poisoned shot is on his lips, but Violet has a change of heart. She spills her red wine all over him so he won’t take the shot.
“That wasn’t smart,” Let’s Play texts Violet as Henry goes to clean up in the bathroom.
Cara approaches Violet, saying she can tell she’s been acting weird all night and offering to help get her out of a bad date. Then she gives away the clue that puts the pieces together.
Cara tells her that Richard has been staring at Violet all night and is seated at a table another regular normally requests.
Violet pieces together that Richard must be Let’s Play as he’s been watching her all night and Violet knew that whoever Let’s Play was called ahead and requested her table and their own.
She goes over to Richard and offers him a shot. He refuses the shot kindly but uses her name while turning it down. She tells him that she never told him her name.
That’s when Richard drops all pretenses and darkly tells her to sit. He takes out his earpiece and tells her he admires her tenacity, although he says it won’t help her.
He makes her drink one of the shots she brought over (non-poisoned) as he explains that the table he’s sitting at is situated in the blind spot of the cameras. He explains that people hired him to get rid of Henry and the SD card as those were the final two loose ends left for covering up the mayor’s fraud. He also reveals that Henry is an FBI informant.
Richard’s plan will have Violet take the fall for Henry’s death as she’s on camera poisoning his shot at her table and he made the poison from drugs Violet often prescribes. He says it will be painted as “widow assassin strikes again,” despite Violet maintaining she didn’t kill her husband.
Pants now clean, Henry approaches Violet and Richard. Richard immediately starts playing nice again, offering Henry the poisoned shot, which he initially refuses but then takes.
Violet asks Henry to give them one more minute and she will explain everything. Henry excuses himself. Richard then calls the masked man to call off the kill mission on Toby and tells Violet that her son will be safe.
He digs into the dessert in front of him, saying all that’s left is for him to enjoy his dessert and watch Henry die.
As Richard eats, Violet reveals that this meal reminds her of the last time her abusive husband Blake took her out for dinner. She says he would always take her for an “apology dinner,” which taught her how to be good at pretending.
She tells Richard she only pretended to poison the shot and that while he was talking to Henry just a moment ago, she poisoned his dessert.
Furious at being outsmarted, Richard pulls out a gun and shoots at Violet, but Henry pushes her out of the way — taking the bullet himself. One of Richard’s bullets whizzes past and hits the glass wall, where small cracks begin to form.
Violet confronts him, grabbing the closest thing she can reach: the puck Henry bought as a gift for Toby. She chucks the hockey puck at the cracks in the glass window, causing it to burst open where the force of the wind sucks Richard out of it.
But the wind is so strong that Violet is also sucked out of the window.
She grabs hold of a ripping tablecloth, dangling over the side of the building until a bleeding Henry pulls her back up to safety. She instructs Henry to apply pressure to his wound, then takes his keys and drives home quickly since before Richard died, he had instructed his counterpart to kill Jen and Toby.
Back at Violet’s house, Jen is mid fight with the intruder, trying her hardest to keep Toby safe. Violet arrives, grabbing a kitchen knife and sneaking up behind him to stab him in the chest.
The masked man throws Violet across the table, kicking her in the side. The masked man gets ready to kill Violet, but Toby uses his remote control toy truck to deliver the gun to Violet, which she quickly grabs and kills the intruder with.
What happens with Henry and Violet?
The end of the movie takes place while Henry and Jen are both recuperating from gunshot wounds in the hospital. A news program in the background informs viewers that the mayor’s office has been linked to an embezzlement scheme.
Violet visits Henry with food, where he thanks her for saving his life. The pair agrees to a second date before drinking the milkshakes Violet brought for them.
