Pop Culture Happy Hour - Drop And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

In the bonkers thriller Drop, Meghann Fahy plays a woman whose first date goes off the rails when she starts getting increasingly alarming message drops from someone nearby. And this potentially romantic dinner turns into a life-or-death situation, real quick.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture.To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Okay, so say you're out, living your life, and suddenly, out of nowhere, you get a random irdropped message on your phone from a complete stranger. You'd probably just ignore it and disable further contact, right? Well, most of us are not characters in the bonkers thriller, drop. This movie's about a woman whose first date goes off the rolls when she starts getting increasingly alarming air drops from someone nearby. And this potentially romantic dinner turns into a life or death situation real quick. I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about Drop on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is the co-host of Slate's ICYMIMI podcast and former PCH producer, Candice.

Welcome back, Candice. This is great. It's great to have you here. Oh, I'm so glad to see you. Hello. Hello. Hello. We also have one of our other producers here on Pop Culture Happy Hour, Liz Metzger.

Hello, Liz. Welcome back. Hello. Happy to be here. Producer City. Like Roku City. Such a fun movie to actually be talking to you both about. This is going to be a ride just like the movie.

So in Drop, Megan Fahey plays Violet, a single mom going on her first date with a guy she met online named Henry. He's played by Brandon Sclanar. Sorry, I'm late. I live. Oh, it's not fine. I mean, it is fine. It's not a problem. Sorry, I got a drink because I was nervous.

It clearly hasn't helped. Yeah, I had a couple of the car on the way over. Also, it didn't help. The date seems to be going well until she was. She accepts an airdrop request on her phone. Then the messages keep coming, and they keep getting weirder and darker and ultimately more personal. They become impossible to ignore, and now she's beholden to the demands of the mysterious messenger. And that mysterious messenger could be anyone else in this restaurant at this moment, another patron, the piano player, maybe even Henry.

And we should also mention the movie touches on domestic abuse. We'll get to that in a bit. Drop is directed by Christopher Landon, who previously directed Happy Death Day, and its sequel. It's in theaters now. Now, I do also have to like preface this by saying that at the top of this show, I called it air dropping because that's what we're all familiar with. Technically in the movie, they call it Digidrop because I'm sure Apple doesn't want to be associated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Trademarks, whatever. But anyway, that's what it is. Liz, I'm going to start with you. What did you make of this very weird movie? You know, there's a lot of reasons I like Drop. One, I was able to see it at South By

Southwest, which was the premiere. So I'm already like caught up a little bit in the audience. For a movie like this, that helps. Am I also sitting next to Aisha Harris? Yes. Yes. We were there. These are things that help me like a movie. And this is a great movie to watch with a big audience because it is a movie. You are sitting there going, oh no, she didn't do that. No, the child and the child with a cute little colored glasses. I had such a fun time. And I really do try not to get too invested into like how everyone else is reacting. But it is a movie that is silly and fun and playing with like tropes of what it's like to be in a very contained thriller. You have the very quirky server.

Jeffrey Self is so good as server on his first day. Server mat. Yes. Yes. You have the super, super nice bartender who's going to ask you a ton of questions about your kid. there's just so many fun little characters in this very small world of the restaurant, though we do go a little bit outside of that. The thing is I like Megan Fahey.

Me too. I like Megan Fahey and everything she does. Yes. It is a fun movie. I actually have no complaints. Here I am. I'm having a great time. I will be the drop defender.

You are. I love it. I was a trap defender. I loved M. Knight's Trap. Had a great time. No notes. I am so glad you shouted out. Jeffrey Self as the waiter because he was by far my favorite part of this movie.

He's one of those actors who's like, I'm in this role. I'm going to make the most of this. I'm going to go big. I'm going to give huge expressive faces. He has great timing. Shout out to him. Candice, did the message get into you? Did you accept?

Were you dropped in? Oh, no. So here's the deal. I was getting Megan vibes from this movie walking in. And the thing is, my most anticipated film of the year is the sequel to Megan. And so to me, I was like, oh, this is going to be like a horror. There's going to be like thrilling elements. It's going to really hit that zone.

And I do think this is not really a horror movie. It's more of a thriller. But that's kind of one example of how like I maybe had higher expectations for this that were not met. For example, I think the movie this is most like is carry on on Netflix, which was my favorite movie of last year. It's the one where Jason Bateman basically like. like is telling Taryn Edderton what to do because he's a TSA agent. And he's like, if you don't do this, then your girlfriend's going to die. Which is kind of similar premise here of like someone is dropping a bunch of memes.

And I'll give credit there. The meme usage, very good. I like the knockoff meme. I like the ones that I could tell. I was like, you could not get that. But we got close. But we got really close. Exactly.

And they really brought it in. They brought in kombucha girl. They brought in the distracted boyfriend meme. Like they were within their memeology bag. And despite. all of that, I can't help but ask, like, guys, how conceivable is this plot? Because I'm not going to lie. The second, I get that first meme, I'm going airplane mode. But the thing is, you can't do that in this, in this type of context because... She has a son. She has a son. We don't have sons. The thing I love between this and carry on is, like, these are both movies that use very similar storytelling elements, which is they gamify the plot. They kind of lead you almost like a robot in a video game in a maze of like, you get this instruction. Uh-oh, you made the wrong choice. There's this. A, B, kind of binary here. And I like that.

And even though I have to say, Liz, holding your hand while I say this, I did not love it as much as you. I agree that, like, my audience did kind of add this, like, fourth element to it of just the reactions were so fun. It felt so big. And I will say, even though I did love this in a theater, this will go very hard on peacock. Yes. So it's okay to wait. Hard on peacock, assuming that you have at least one or two other people in the room with you and you can both go full in on just like what is happening. I would also say for those of you who are listening and who have not seen it yet, you should absolutely not watch the trailer because it gives away so much.

One of the worst spoilery trailers I've seen in a long time. I think I lean more with you, Candice. I did enjoy this movie. It was silly. It did give me trap five. Big grays. I don't think it went far enough as trap. Sure.

It was nonsensical, but not as nonsensical as trap. And I needed it to be, like, live too much in the middle gray area of being like, like, just not absurd enough. For me, I kept thinking about this movie that came out in 2012 called Compliance. It's a fascinating movie that stars Ann Dowd as the manager of a small town fast food restaurant who receives a call from someone who's impersonating a law enforcement officer. This person claims that they've received a complaint that one of her employees has stolen money from a customer. And so he starts getting her to interrogate them. And it leads into this like, over the phone, over the course of the time, she does these really,

horrific and unethical and possibly illegal things to her employees because she thinks she's helping the company. And this is actually like inspired by a series of real life phone scams that happened. This is kind of what this movie is. Like drop is about someone who like has something dangling in front of her and is being told like you have to do this or else. Granted like there are real threats to this movie has become to see. But the extreme lengths she winds up going to. This to me felt like the brainwant version. of compliance where it's like we're not really interested in this idea of like compliance and what it means to like be beholden to something you don't know where it's coming from. It's just like this is just going to be fun, silly and go to the extremes of everything. Even the restaurant they go to is like this Uber fancy Chicago sky high restaurant with floor to ceiling windows. That's actually a big part of the plot is like they're like sitting by the window and like they might move. They might not. Who knows? It's kind of silly. But overall I think this is the type of movie that definitely benefits from seeing with an audience. I don't know if it hits

well otherwise. I think one of the reasons that it is not like trap is because there is like emotional weight. It's a feature. I wouldn't say it deterred me from this film, but there is like a lot of emotional weight when you cast Megan Fahey. Like she's not just going to be doing broad comedy. She is like going to give you the most beautiful tears you've ever seen. She's going to look at the camera and you're going to look and you're going to be like, oh gosh, what are we doing? to her. Yeah. And a lot of her story is very much, like, her backstory and what's happening in the restaurant,

they're all interconnected of why she feels like she has to make these decisions and why she feels like she has to do anything it takes. Like, it can never be a true comedy, which is fine. But it does mean you can't be like full kooky kooky. There is quite a bit of like emotional weight just in her beautiful dough eyes, but also in the premise of the film. Yeah. I found it interesting that Megan Fahy's character did not.

use the technology against the assailant because this is one of those movies that I think appeals to me, maybe our generation, because it's so digitally savvy, right? It's like the meme culture, the language, the air dropping of it all, even explaining that to someone who is not within like a certain time, like age range is wild. But I thought it was interesting how kind of in the third act, obviously Megan Fahey, she was damsel in distress. She's being told by this anonymous digital villain to like do all these things. And instead of using that digital like toolkit against the assailant, which I feel like is something Carri-on kind of did, she goes full action mode.

And I was kind of like, okay, first off, I didn't know you had that within you, Pilates Queen. It kind of made me wonder, am I a little over this trope of like women with these really heavy backstories in movies like this where the premise is like goofy and wild, but the thing is they kind of use things like the fact that she was a survivor of domestic abuse. That's a huge part of her backstory. The fact that this is her first date in so long and she's so worried about like leaving her son alone. I think using that but then also trying to like basically say, look at her, she has to sacrifice her desire as a woman for her protective instinct as a mother.

I was kind of like, could we go one more? Could we go one more? Yeah. I think that was kind of what kept me back was that domestic abuse backstory because it didn't seem necessary to me. It's like your child alone feels like enough that you would be concerned. Like I don't understand like why you also had to have this very traumatic backstory. It felt a little like an attempt to make this meteor than it needed to be. And that's I think where you're saying, Liz, like when you have that, it's hard to go full trap. Like you can't go full trap. And in trap also,

you know, the pop star in that uses the technology against. Him. That was missing. I don't know. I just needed a little more kook and a little less tragic backstory. I completely agree. I think the thing is there is a wanting to show that this experience is very much touching of the idea of like you are trapped in a relationship. In this, it's a digital relationship with this air dropper. That she is like, I want to protect my child. Again, I say it's a feature. It's not a bug. I understand that that's what they're trying to do. It does add more heft. Do I need more heft in a movie like this? No, but I am fine to have it. What did you guys think of like the lighting in this film? Because they did something kind of interesting where they were using spotlights and it felt very theory and they were doing like digital projections of the text, which I did like. I loved that.

But then they were also putting the security camera footage on the walls of the bathroom. And I was like, okay, there's something a little bit like a black box theater about this very small, very contained that I did enjoy. Small cast, small cast. Look, I loved the look of this film. And again, that restaurant design was like... It looks expensive. That's hard. It looks expensive.

Apparently they built like this set basically and built a fully functioning restaurant. It did seem to play as though we were in a play in a way. It's like, oh, people are actually ordering and whatever. And I will say the music also is very like signaling cues, like very dramatic anytime like... Yeah. Very sonic. The whole thing feels like you're willing. watching a trailer sometimes where it's like, you know, like the trailer kind of emphasizes everything.

I mean, the thing is like, I love the premise of this movie. And I love the way that we got into the premise pretty immediately. The drop started happening quite up front in act one. It's a well-paced movie. Well-paced movie. Yes. In and out. If there's any value to take away from a film like this, which like, hey, maybe you're Liz and you love it, you watch it five times. Good for you. Maybe you're like me and you're kind of like, we had a good time. We walk out. Yeah. I do think maybe this is kind of the direction that some of these smaller films that get made by bigger studios can go of like, hey, this premise may be wild. The film might be flimsy, but if you have a good Megan Fahey, we can do something today.

This is like, to me, a solid B minus C plus movie that like is absolutely enjoyable with friends. We need those. We need them. The cinema needs to be filled and support movies that are economical to certain extent that are, they're not wasting my time. They look good. We do need those. We do. I mean, Megan Fahy, to me, big star, but not as like a huge heavy hitter in everyone's household. Like, I like seeing movies that are just not just the same A-listers I see in everything.

I don't know. I guess, look, Candice and I are not as fully drop-pilled as Liz, but I think we all agree that we need more movies like this. It's a good time. I'm glad drop exists. I'm glad drop exists. Obviously, we are into drop. Tell us what you think about drop. find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCH and on Letterbox at letterbox.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in our episode description to that. And up next, we're going to be talking about what's making us happy this week. And now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week what's making us happy. Candace, hit us. So my happy this week is the new album from Two Hollis. Two Hollis, I would say, makes Tonightus, music. And what I mean by that is that background, he used to be an alt musician, started doing EDM. And two halls, his whole story is that he got Ableton when he was really young,

started using Reddit and, like, YouTube to figure out how to use it and make music. So I guess this is kind of like the next evolution of bedroom pop, bedroom EDM. But he has his new album out. It's called Star. He worked on it with Jonah Abraham, who produced some of Playboy Cardi's music. So I guess if you're looking for something to kind of tide you over, post-brat pre-summer, this album is very Lindsay Lohan Beach Club vibe but for people who still have to clock into their job on Monday

and for me the standout song that I'm loving right now is nice off the album let's hear a little bit of it Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god

Candice, I am at a Las Vegas poll party right now. This is the vibe. I have to say, I'm kind of into it. And so that's what's making me happy. The song Nice off the new two-hawls album. This is my drop. This is my drop. Thank you, Candice.

Liz, what is making you happy? Okay. What has taken over my life is I have got into a classic game. This is like if I was saying I got into checkers or if I got into Yatchez. see, I've started to play mahjong with my friends. I know. I specifically play Ritchie Mahjong. There's a lot of different types of mahjong, so don't come for me.

It's so fun to play a game with your friends in person and to learn it together so you can all be bad. It is fun to get skunked online playing people and all we, like, message back as emojis or, like, reactions. I love a trick-taking game. I love Gin Rummy. Yes. And I really love little tiles that.

look like little custer. So this is such a fun game to play with your friends. So all we would need is one more person and we could all play. If you have three friends who want to play until morning and tonight, I really think we should all be playing mahjong, Ruchi Mahjong, not going to lie. I love a complicated rule and I refuse to do the scoring. That's outside my pay grade. But I highly recommend getting into mahjong. I love it. I have a big board gamer. you know, card gamer. And I have still not yet played mahjong ever. Next retreat.

You'll see me with the tiles. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. I'm going to hold you to do that, miss. Please, please. All right. Well, what is making me happy is, well, what makes me sad is that I don't live in New York anymore. Don't get me wrong. I love living on the West Coast.

But because I don't live in New York anymore, I don't get to go see Broadway, live theater as much. Off of that, I am loving New York Mag's recent yesteryear issue, which features interviews with an array of Broadway legends about their definitive roles with really, really great photoshoots by Mark Selleger. You've got Barbara Streisand talking about her role in Funny Girl, Andre DeShields discussing his role as The Wiz and the original production, Joel Gray talking about Cabaret, Liza, talking about Liza with Z. And you get these, like, great little tidbits. Bab's revealing she reuses her tea bags because she remembers what it's like to be poor. They're not all just happy stories.

A lot of them have complicated feelings about those performances. Exactly. Delicious. Yes. So yeah, I highly recommend checking this out if you were at all a theater lover, a lover of live performance. The photos are great. The interviews are fun. And that is New York Magazine's yesteryear issue.

The official headline is like, good God, it was fun, which is just a quote. But go find that. highly worth it. It made me smile. It made me very happy. And this Sunday in our podcast feed, we'll have another monthly mailbox bonus episode for our Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus supporters. Glenn and I will be talking all about a topic that is very near and dear to my heart because I have a lot of thoughts. He had a lot of thoughts about movie theater etiquette. Yes, we get a little spicy. We get a little spicy. Sign up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org slash happy. and we'll also have a link to that in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Candice Lim, Liz Metzker.

Thanks so much for dropping in and talk to about drop. Anytime. This was so fun. Thank you. And this episode was produced by Hufso Fathema and Liz Metzger. Liz, hey, and edited by Mike Katzv. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all. next week.