As we continue to approach the impending future where technology takes over our everyday lives, in the moment, tech-based horror stories are all the rage, intending on warning us of the dangerous side effects to technology dependency. There’s even a new season of Black Mirror that just dropped at the exact time of writing this review. Tech horror can be as extreme as full-blown science-fiction to as mall as nefarious activity through a basic phone app. If you’re connected to the internet, you’re in danger. Often the more interesting of these stories are the ones that could happen to us every day, which is what makes Drop such a clever premise. Based on an incident that happened to producer Sam Lerner’s girlfriend, in which she was simply (and thankfully harmlessly) targeted with creepy Shrek memes through Apple AirDrop, director Christopher Landon and writers Jillian Jacobs (not to be confused with actress Gillian Jacobs) and Chris Roach construct an perfectly simple scenario, contained mostly in one location with a limited cast and let the dominoes roll.

Meghann Fahy is our lead, a woman named Violet, who is attempting to have a normal night out on a date with a man she met through a dating app, Henry (Brandon Sklenar). She is a single mother, and domestic abuse survivor, and has left her sister Jen (Violett Bean) to babysit her young son at home. As her date begins, she begins to receive ominious threats through messages and memes by way of a fictional app (representing Apple AirDrop, though probably due to legality is changed for the film). These threats are demanding she kill her date or her son and sister will die, and most importantly, she cannot tell anyone what is happening. This leads to many stressful misunderstandings and conversations between Henry, the restaurant staff, and a few of the guests around her as she does her best silent detective work to suss out her surroundings and stop whoever is threatening her.

The camera is almost always focused on Fahy, who does an excellent job making Violet a charming and engrossing protagonist, doing as much face acting as possible as she examines the crowd of suspects. Sklenar oozes charisma, both allowing us to buy these two are possibly meant for each other and pray they can have at least one normal moment on their night out. Landon’s direction is specific and tightly focused on Fahy’s performance and the geographics of her location.

Drop spends most of its 90 minute runtime treading a very careful line between silly and smart, so it is a bit deflating for the film to devolve into just being silly by the end. It certainly swings for the fences in its last 20 minutes, but it shifts abruptly from a pulpy sleuth thriller into a “logic out the window” bonanza, which feels a bit betraying. Landon decides to just knock all of his pieces off the table that were already playing a nearly-perfect game. It is also disheartening to see that despite its ridiculousness, it also somehow plays itself too safe. Is anybody in real danger if the antagonists are this bad at their job?

Despite that hiccup, Drop is still worth a watch, if not definitely on a Friday night with friends. It’s Wes Craven-lite, but in an era where horror is thriving, this is mostly one to recommend. Word of warning to Apple users, though: maybe turn your AirDrop off for a while, though, as you know this’ll likely give a few bad eggs some dumb ideas.