NEW YORK, April 11 (UPI) — White Lotus and The Perfect Couple actress Meghann Fahy says she doesn’t think anything could have emotionally prepared her to lead her first thriller, Drop.
In theaters Friday, the film follows Violet (Fahy), a widow and single mom out on a first date with Henry (Brandon Sklenar).
When someone in the restaurant AirDrops unsolicited messages to her iPhone, she must choose between killing her handsome dinner partner or risking ever seeing her sister Jen (Violett Beane) and young son Toby (Jacob Robinson) alive again.
“This is my first time doing a film in this genre. So, I was very excited beforehand and also very scared. I think [director Chris Landon], obviously, was just like an incredible leader,” Fahy, 34, recently told the crowd at New York Comic Con.
“He knew exactly what he wanted to do and was able to explain everything to me in a way that was incredibly helpful and useful and, the rest of it, I just kind of was winging it,” she said. “I love these films so much in this genre, but acting in one is like a completely different beast. So, I just kind of trusted him and the script.”
For her many action scenes, however, she trained diligently with a stunt coordinator.
“I did prep for THEM,” Fahy said. “A lot of the stunts in the movie, it was my first time doing stuff like that, so it was so fun.”
The actress said the moral of her movie is: “Decline the Drop. Just press ‘decline.'”
Landon said writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach got the idea for the film after hearing about a couple who got their own unexpected AirDrops — photos of babies and dogs — from a stranger while out in public.
“They spent the whole night trying to figure out who it was and that was sort of the genesis of the movie,” Landon recalled.
“It’s a good cautionary tale. I don’t know if you need to delete all your apps, but I think that the movie definitely touches on the idea that we live in an age where being harassed and attacked by someone that you can’t see is a part of everyone’s lives, whether they like it or not.”
Unfolding over the course of one night, the story packs loads of suspense into its lean 95 minutes.
“It’s a movie that plays out in real time and, so, I think that really does contribute to the pace, the speed of the film, the tension of it and, also, because you’re in a single location for most of the movie, as well,” Landon said.
Asked what technology personally freaks him out, Landon replied: “I don’t know if this falls under ‘technology,’ but I have two little kids and all of their toys seem [expletive] haunted to me all the time.”
“They go off in the middle of the night all the time and I’m searching the house trying to find them. So, that’s usually the scary [expletive],” he added.
“That could be PTSD from our Paranormal Activity movies,” producer Jason Blum chimed in.
“Probably,” Landon agreed.
Blum — whose films also include Insidious, The Purge, The Invisible Man, M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s — said he thinks the scariest movies are rooted in reality and, in the 21st century, the stuff of nightmares is rapidly evolving.
“The best horror comes from things that we ourselves are really fearful of and I think, especially in the last four or five years, there’s been an enormous amount to be fearful of on the phones that are in our pockets,” Blum said.
“The movie that Chris made really plays on that fear and the movie is super intense. It’s a terrific movie,” he added.
