Unpalatable: "Drop"

Director Christopher Landon's previous projects for Blumhouse - the two Happy Death Days and 2020's bodyswap slasher Freaky - were obvious files under horror-comedy. The weirdest thing about Landon's latest, the thoroughly Internet-brained Drop, is that it initially shows signs of intent to push into far more serious horror-thriller territory. As indicated by a prologue that puts a mangled woman at the mercy of a gun-toting spouse and then an early scene that establishes heroine Violet (Meghann Fahy) as a counsellor for survivors of domestic abuse, Drop means to chime with the number one trending topic among all the lonely people on social media: the supposedly parlous state of play between the sexes. It does this by weaponising the already high tension of a first date that goes wildly awry. Single mum Violet's return to in-person dating, sitting down at Chicago fine dining establishment Palate with hunky photographer Henry (Brandon Sklenar, a discount-brand Chris Evans), keeps being interrupted by the ping of her phone, signalling first the arrival of anonymously airdropped memes (annoying, as anyone who's ever been added to a group chat will attest), and then security-cam footage of masked intruders in her own kitchen, which is understandably more troubling when you're trying to have a nice night out.

There are reasons Landon has been so in demand over recent years: he works cheaply and efficiently (often profitably), and he's demonstrated a keen eye for a solid movie hook. This script, by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, briskly loads its larder with suspects and red herrings: the brooding mystery man Violet literally bumps into upon entering the restaurant (Travis Nelson), the genial fellow midlifer seeking a similar second shot at love (Reed Diamond), the cheesy pianist (Ed Weeks, from The Mindy Project) who uses Henry's delayed arrival to make a move on our gal. Issues, flaws and outright liabilities only manifest once we get into the mechanics of the plot, which at most junctures requires these characters to behave in ways that stretch and defy all credibility. Fahy is caught frantically trying to make sense of the desperate measures these drops oblige Violet to take; appetisers are ordered but never brought to table; and, indeed, so little food is consumed in this restaurant you wonder whether everyone on screen is simply sloshed on the house red. These aren't people acting like they're in a movie, occasioning the kind of allowances we've all made from time to time in the interests of a fun Friday or Saturday night; they're people acting like they're in a punishingly stupid movie, a bridge too far for even basic multiplex enjoyment. By the final-reel delivery of a killer panna cotta, the film's pièce de dumb-assed résistance, Drop has travelled all the way round the back of stupid to become partly entertaining again, but between last year's spooky pool fiasco Night Swim, last month's incoherent The Woman in the Yard and now this - an unholy trinity of scripts no serious reader ought to have let pass - you are forced to consider what's gone wrong at Blumhouse of late. Everywhere else you look, horror is raising its game - but these guys have apparently sacked their shrewdest creatives and replaced them with chimps.

Drop is now showing in cinemas nationwide.