First dates can be murder. This is especially true for Violet (Meghann Fahy), the heroine of Christopher Landon’s latest high-concept thriller, Drop, who receives anonymous and increasingly threatening messages on her cellphone while on her first night out following the death of her husband.

The evening comes to a head when she is ordered to murder her date, Henry (Brandon Sklenar), or risk her young son being killed instead.

Fahy, best known for her performance in season two of The White Lotus, is convincingly discombobulated as Violet, a victim of domestic abuse who is taking her first tentative steps back out into the dating world.

Sklenar (It Ends With Us), as Violet’s all-too-understanding new love interest, is similarly on point, skirting the line between impossibly charming and potentially dangerous as Violet’s perilous situation escalates.

Screenwriters Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach (Truth or Dare) further amplify the situation by positioning Violet and Henry in a swanky fine-dining restaurant on the top floor of a Chicago skyscraper where a certain decorum must be observed.