When I watched the preview for the suspense-thriller Drop, I thought for sure that I knew who the true villain would turn out to be. I even told my legions of YouTube followers as much.

It turned out that I was wrong on the specifics, but correct in a deeper sense. I was “right,” that is, in my general drift of where I thought the locus of villainy would be located, even if I turned out to be wrong on the specifics. (I as I admitted in a subsequent video for my legions of YouTube followers.)

In Drop, an entertaining if at times implausible thriller, heroine Violet (Meghann Fahy), meets Henry (Brendan Sklenar) for a date at a swanky restaurant on the top floor of a city skyscraper. Henry, whom Violet has heretofore only online, is handsome and charming, and seems to all appearances to be a real “catch.”

I won’t go into the intricacies— and implausibilities— of the plot, except to say that someone is contacting Violet via a phone app and making increasingly ominous declarations. At first it just seems like a annoying prank, but soon enough it becomes clear that this unknown person is part of a criminal organization which intends to do harm to her loved ones unless she obeys his commands to the letter.

Violet’s sinister interlocutor orders her to keep the content of these messages a secret from her date, bide her time, and eventually, slip a lethal poison into his drink (the vial has been placed in her purse without her knowledge)… if she doesn’t do as she is told, her son and her sister will both be killed.

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The trailer does not reveal the identity of the online terrorist, but after seeing the it several times, I felt sure that it was Henry, and that the command to poison him was some sort of pseudo-clever “misdirect” on the writers’ part.

After all, I reasoned, this was a Hollywood movie, made in the 2020s. It surely wouldn’t do to have a seemingly-ideal husband-to-be prove to be anything other than an evil psychopath. A single mother (it turns out that she is widowed, and that her husband had been a violent nutjob) must only be a girlboss, one who (say it with me) “don’t need no man.”

I pictured in my mind’s eye the climactic “twist” scene, which (I figured) would feature an extreme close-up of Henry’s smug, smirking face as he reveals his villainy.

Then I foresaw the lamely predictable comeuppance he would receive at the hands of the put-upon heroine; she would no doubt stab him in the heart at an unexpected moment, and as he dies, his face would be frozen in dismayed astonishment. After sticking it to the evil douchebag, the boss babe would then shake her head, her face contorting with contempt, and would mutter between her teeth, “Men!” Roll credits.

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In spite of these dour prognostications, I found myself curious enough to watch the actual movie, and it turns out that I was wrong. Henry’s not the bad guy at all! Then again, the movie’s preview didn’t introduce me to much more obvious villain: the character of Richard (Reed Diamond).

Violet runs into Richard about 20 minutes into the when both of them are at the bar, waiting for their dates to arrive. Richard, an unattractive, socially awkward, middle-aged man, confides that he feels nervous; he has been set up for a blind date, he chuckles self-effacingly, and those never seem to go well for him.

A moment later, Richard’s date arrives, and sure enough, her initial smile upon greeting him dissolves in conspicuous disappointment after she sees his face. Violet feels pity for Richard at that moment. She should know better than to have compassion, of course. Richard, after all, is an unattractive, socially-awkward man, and unattractive, socially awkward men are clearly “incel”-coded, meaning they are creeps unworthy of sympathy.

And sure enough, Richard turns out to be the movie’s real bad guy!

As the actual credits rolled, I smacked my ample forehead and muttered to myself, “But of course! Would they really make the hot guy evil when there’s a romantically unsuccessful, nebbishy dork in the cast? Of course not. How foolish I had been not to foresee the likelihood of such an eventuality!”

https://andynowicki.substack.com/p/unattractive-socially-awkward-men