Meghann Fahy's thriller 'Drop' was inspired by real AirDrops — but of dog pics (2025)

First dates can be scary, but Christopher Landon, the filmmaker behind Happy Death Day and Freaky, turns the experience into a full-blown nightmare in his new thriller, Drop.

Meghann Fahy, who evaded death during her stay at the White Lotus in Sicily, confronts new horrors in the film as Violet, a widowed mother who decides to put herself out there and go on a date with Henry (Brandon Sklenar), a charming photographer she met on a dating app. But her evening at an upscale restaurant is upended when she receives AirDrops of sinister memes from an unknown sender.

As dizzying as the plot sounds, the movie was loosely inspired by true events. "Our producers were at a dinner one night, and they were receiving strange AirDrops from someone else in the restaurant and didn't know where they were coming from," Fahy tells Entertainment Weekly in a joint interview with costar Sklenar. "They weren't sinister. I think it was dog photos or something. They were like, actually, that's an incredible idea for a thriller."

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The threats against Violet quickly escalate beyond AirDrops of Homer Simpson receding into the bushes, among other silly memes made sinister in this context. The mysterious sender, who managed to plant cameras around the restaurant to keep tabs on Violet, messages her instructions to kill her date. If she doesn't, she'll be forced to watch helplessly as a hooded figure kills her young son and sister, who's on babysitting duty. The pulsating thriller is mostly confined to the restaurant, making audiences feeltrapped alongside the film's heroine.

"The limitations of being confined to this table and in this one restaurant in this one location was something that excited me," Sklenar says. "How do we build suspense with so many limitations? That was something I loved about it from the jump."

"I was flipping through the pages so quickly," adds Fahy, who jumped at the opportunity to work with Landon as a fan of his previous work. "I feel like that's such a good sign for a movie that is meant to be a thriller. There was a technological component to it, but the script didn't really feel like it was getting buried in the phone. It still felt very much character-driven."

What makes the movie particularly frightening is that its story is "within the realm of reality," Fahy says. "It could probably happen. I think that in and of itself is commenting on just how available we are to strangers and how easy it is for us to be invaded now [in] this digital age." Sklenar adds that the digital aspect of the thriller "speaks to how often [technology gets] in our way in our daily life."

He continues, "Most people's first impressions of somebody now are through Instagram or an app, and they'll almost base more of their opinions on someone through that than how they actually exist in a physical space, which is pretty insane."

"Insane" is also a good word to describe the unexpected places the thriller goes. No spoilers here, but Drop allowed an elated Fahy to flex her action genre muscles. As shown in the trailers, Violet nearly falls out of a window of the high-rise restaurant after she confronts the culprit and pieces together the motive. "The harness was definitely one of the more challenging days of filming — just being hung out the window," she says. "You're shooting it for 10 hours, and you're screaming and hyperventilating, but you can't really breathe in it. And you don't have control over your body or the weight of it. But I loved it. I learned so much. I'd definitely be down to do more [stunt work] in the future."

Text this to your date or AirDrop a meme reminder: Drop is in theaters on April 11.