“I never want to go on a first date ever again!”

So reads one of the scrawled notes I made while watching Drop a few weeks ago. Also included: “Men: why?” 

Terrible first date memories aside, there is much to love about this juicy psychological thriller with The White Lotus star Meghann Fahy, not least the fact that it comes in at a tight 95 minutes in a world of three-and-a-half-hour epics (I see you and your interval, The Brutalist).  

Fahy plays Violet, a single mother and widow with a traumatic past, who’s going on a first date with a man she’s been talking to for months online. She’s nervous and wants to cancel, but her sister convinces her to take the plunge while she babysits. 

And for a couple of minutes, at least, things look good. Henry (Brandon Sklenar) is handsome and charming, but within minutes, Violet receives dropped messages from someone in the restaurant. At first, she thinks it’s a joke, but the messages keep coming until she’s given the ultimatum: kill Henry or your child will be murdered. 

And then it all kicks off. 

This is a film that gets straight to the point and doesn’t let up. It’s tightly wound, silly in the best way, claustrophobic and has brilliantly believable chemistry between the two leads. 

This is Fahy’s first time as the number one on the call sheet after seminal roles in The White Lotus, The Perfect Couple and, of course The Bold Type, and she lights up the screen here as Violet. As she did with Daphne in White Lotus, she brings humanity and authenticity to a role that could be cliched or two-dimensional and makes it wholly entertaining and watchable. 

One of the less fun things – something I couldn’t stop thinking about after I left the cinema – was how it smartly depicted what so many women have to go through: maintaining a face of calm when underneath everything is crumbling to dust. And the way we’re so often forced to stay charming and likeable to guarantee our own safety. How many of us have had to give a dead-eyed smile to a man getting in our personal space on a bus/pub/walk to work out of fear that any other reaction might make them turn on us? 

It wasn’t something I expected to be musing on.

So this is your sign to delete your dating apps again, and take yourself on a trip to the cinema instead. 

If you want to know more about Meghann Fahy, she’s on the cover of Stylist this month, and you can read her interview, which spans everything from The Bold Type to medical misogyny, here. 

Drop is in cinemas now 

Images: Universal Studios, HBO