Christopher Landon loves a challenge.
The writer/director/producer multi-hyphenate has helped to define the modern era of horror films. From shaping franchises like Paranormal Activity and writing films like Disturbia which brought the Hitchcockian thriller to modern audiences in serving his take on Rear Window, to redefining horror comedy with some of the past decades’ best films in the genre like Happy Death Day, Freaky, and producing and writing one of this year’s best genre mash-ups, Heart Eyes, Landon could easily hang his hat on genre work moving forward. But Landon’s work on Disturbia made him want to flex his filmmaking muscles and direct a thriller in the Hitchcock mold, not just write it. From that, we get Drop, which hits theaters in the United States on April 11th.
Landon is keen to show audiences something in a different drive from his previous filmmaking efforts and Drop delivers in spades.The ingenuity behind the setpieces in the film are very well thought out to become almost characters in their own way and hearing Landon describe the nuance in them shows the love he has for the filmmaking process. We caught up with Landon at the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans for the film’s showcase screening at the festival and asked Landon about his process, the film’s setpieces and exploring genre. Check out our interview below and check out Drop in theaters on April 11th.
Cult Classics: We’re here with director Christopher Landon. My first questions for you is; a lot of your movies have sort of been these genre-mash-ups in a way, and this looks like its different. Can you tell us what attracted you to this idea and the genesis of it?
Landon: I think part of it was I had felt like I had done the horror/comedy thing – and it’s not to say that I don’t love it. I still love it. But, I felt like I was ready for a challenge and I was ready to do something different and flex some different muscles.
But also, in a weird way, I feel like it was a return for me, because I – a long time ago, too many years – I wrote a movie called Disturbia, which was very much a Hitchcockian — modern, whatever, kind of movie. So this kind of feels like a weird bookend to that movie. So it was nice to do, what I would call, a straight forward thriller, but one that I think still has a lot of the hallmarks of what I do. So there’s a lot of humor. It is intense, it is violent and scary. But, you know, I’m not blending tones in the way I used to do.
Cult Classics: Now this movie is primarily a one-location set film, with the restaurant featured prominently. I’ve heard this set is very unique – can you tell us a little bit about it?
Landon: Yeah, we built a 12,000 square-foot restaurant and it was elevated — it was on risers, so it was about 20 feet off the ground, I think maybe more actually. But it was like a fully-operational restaurant and it had to operate that way. So, you know, we had real food, we had a full cast of people that were sort of moving in and out of the space. People were eating, people were drinking, the bar was fully stocked. So we created an actual restaurant. Which is pretty cool, we had a chef! We had a chef who created a menu, the real food – so that part was really fun.
Cult Classics: Texting plays a big part in this film, We’ve seen a lot of movies where text messages pop up (on screen) sort of like an iPhone. And here, the way you did the texting was really interesting. Was that something you came up with or talked with the script writers about on how the text messages would be menacing the lead in the film in this unique way?
Landon: Yeah, I knew going into it that, generally speaking, text messages are boring and trying to show that and insert shots of phones are awful. And so I knew that I wanted it to feel more like an actual conversation. I was almost trying to weirdly have to build a character out of the visual aspects of those text messages. And so I knew I had a general ides of how I wanted them to look. What I had to do going into this was every shot where I used the text, we had already predetermined how it would look on screen. And that’s why we have the appropriate negative space and how it would move and interact with the characters. Sometimes, you see like there;s a moment obviously where Henry (Brandon Sklenar) walks through one of them and so there was a lot of thought that went into that before we ever started filming.
Cult Classics: Did you do a lot of pre-visualization to figure out what you wanted it to look like?
Landon: No, I know of worked with some people where I described where I described what I kind of had in my head and then we had three different versions – but they were all pretty close to what I had described. So it didn’t take long to kind of land on what I thought was right.
Cult Classics: That’s great. It’s like it’s own character, it’s so good. Thanks for talking to us and check out Drop in theaters April 11th.
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First dates are nerve-wracking enough. Going on a first date while an unnamed, unseen troll pings you personal memes that escalate from annoying to homicidal? Blood-chilling.
Director Christopher Landon returns to the thriller genre with the playful, keep-you-guessing intensity he perfected in the Happy Death Day films with this of-the-moment whodunnit where everyone in the vicinity is a suspect . . . or victim. Drop is jointly produced by blockbuster genre houses Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes.
Emmy nominee Meghann Fahy, breakout star of White Lotus and The Perfect Couple, plays Violet, a widowed mother on her first date in years, who arrives at an upscale restaurant where she is relieved that her date, Henry (It Ends with Us’ Brandon Sklenar) is more charming and handsome than she expected. But their chemistry begins to curdle as Violet begins being irritated and then terrorized by a series of anonymous drops to her phone.
She is instructed to tell nobody and follow instructions or the hooded figure she sees on her home security cameras will kill Violet’s young son and babysitting sister. Violet must do exactly as directed or everyone she loves will die. Her unseen tormentor’s final directive? Kill Henry.
The film also stars Violett Beane (Truth or Dare) and newcomer Jacob Robinson as Violet’s sister and son; with Reed Diamond (Moneyball), Gabrielle Ryan (Power Book IV: Force), Jeffery Self (Mack & Rita), Ed Weeks (The Mindy Project) and Travis Nelson (The Lake) as the restaurant’s staff and diners.
Drop is directed by acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Landon, the writer-director of last year’s We Have a Ghost and the zeitgeist-rattling Blumhouse hits Freaky, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones and the Happy Death Day films. The film is written by Jillian Jacobs & Chris Roach, writers of Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare and Fantasy Island.
The film is produced by Jason Blum (Five Nights at Freddy’s, M3GAN) for Blumhouse and by Michael Bay (Transformers films, A Quiet Place franchise), Brad Fuller (A Quiet Place films, The Purge franchise) and Cameron Fuller (The Astronaut) for Platinum Dunes. The executive producer is Sam Lerner.
Genre: Thriller
Cast: Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Violett Beane, Jacob Robinson, Reed Diamond, Gabrielle Ryan, Jeffery Self, Ed Weeks, Travis Nelson
Screenplay: Jillian Jacobs & Chris Roach
Director: Christopher Landon
Producers: Michael Bay, Jason Blum, Brad Fuller, Cameron Fuller
Executive Producer: Sam Lerner