A group of co-workers on what should be a run of the mill team building trip find themselves being hunted by an AI-driven drone.
Tom, traveling with his family to a work retreat where he’s filling in for his boss, finds himself on a team building trip. Along with Adele, Daniel, Sebastian and Jacob, they trek into the wilderness, expecting to mostly be worrying about bugs and annoying personalities, but it quickly becomes apparent that something more sinister is at play. The drone, cheekily named Dragn, seems determined to destroy everyone it comes across.
DRAGN is a fun throwback that never quite commits enough to its own B-movie instincts. Directed by Peter Webber, from the first moments, it’s apparent that there is an obvious love of the 80s and ’90s sci-fi B-movies of yore. Yes, the 80s and 90s now count as yore. Reminiscent of Chopping Mall or Hardware, Dragn takes the B-movie not as a four-letter word, but as a badge of honor. The premise leans right into this. A work retreat is a classic set-up for horror shenanigans. Don’t you just hate it when your tech tries to kill you? Working on a smaller budget, Webber is clever in his use of both the drone and a limited set of resources. The majority of the film takes place in the woods, which naturally provides a compelling backdrop. Webber uses his resources well and tries to turn the limitations into strengths, which at times was quite successful, particularly in some of the more creative kills.
The screenplay by Barry Hutchinson and Alexander Gordon Smith struggled a bit in the beginning to get going, but once the action starts, it moves at a steady pace, though it also falls into familiar beats. The dialogue fell into cliché and predictability a fair bit of the time. This can be a deliberate stylistic choice if leaning into the B-movie style, but then it needed to go further. Balancing tone can be remarkably challenging in a film like this, and leaning even harder into a campy, retro, sci-fi style would have done a lot to make the film more entertaining but more memorable. One successful element was the idea of voyeurism in modern warfare, an idea that could have been developed even further to take the film to the next level. The film flirts with the idea without ever going there enough, leaving it as one more dangling threat of possibility. This sums up a lot of the film’s frustration perfectly: it’s full of ideas that are almost there, but never fully realized.
Tom, played with restraint by James Paxton (yes, son of Bill), is an appealing lead because he is not an action hero. He’s an ordinary guy. His grounded performance adds to the heart of the film, but the backstory with his family was underdeveloped and rang false. This is no fault of the actor, but it meant some of the emotional moments didn’t hit the way they were intended to. Many of the other characters were either not memorable or too two-dimensional to resonate or leave a lasting impression on the audience.
Overall, the film is an entertaining, albeit a bit forgettable, addition to the trope that all of our technology will inevitably kill us. Those familiar with the genre will enjoy another solid foray into a scenario that feels less like fiction and more like our inevitable future. A fun, familiar entry into the killer-tech genre, even if it never quite pushes itself far enough to stand out.
Dragn is currently available to rent or buy.