Charlie (Robert Pattinson) is seen in his chic Boston apartment kitchen, refining his wedding speech with his best man, Mike (Mamoudou Athie). Charlie recounts his “meet-cute” encounter with Emma (Zendaya) at a coffee shop, but a subsequent flashback makes viewers question the actual charm of their first meeting: Charlie spots Emma reading a book, nervously approaches her, and falsely claims to have read it too—a deception he struggles to maintain throughout their initial date. This coffee shop sequence, marked by unsettling jump cuts and an ominous, woodwind-heavy score by Daniel Pemberton, hints at underlying issues in the otherwise attractive couple, with the initial awkwardness appearing to stem more from the insecure Charlie than the seemingly cheerful and confident Emma.
However, as their wedding day approaches, a shocking confession from Emma creates a significant rift between the comfortably upper-middle-class pair. (He works as a museum curator; she edits for a prestigious publishing house.) During a private dinner tasting for their reception, Mike’s wife, Rachel (Alana Haim), who is also Emma’s maid of honor, suggests a wine-fueled game: each person should reveal the worst thing they’ve ever done. The idea is for Charlie and Emma to enter marriage fully aware of each other’s flaws. Mike and Rachel already know each other’s past transgressions: his involved a moment of embarrassing cowardice with a former girlfriend, while hers was a cruel act towards a mentally disabled boy in her youth. Charlie, displaying the indecisive and anxious nature he soon embodies, struggles to find an answer, eventually settling on a vague high school incident he labels “cyberbullying.”
Then, Emma abruptly halts the evening by revealing that during her high school years, she seriously considered, though ultimately didn’t commit, a horrific act of violence. The promotional materials for The Drama have been deliberately vague about this “twist,” which is, in fact, less of a twist and more the core premise driving the entire narrative. Since this revelation happens only about 20 minutes into the film—and meaningful discussion of the movie is impossible without acknowledging the bride’s disclosure—I will emulate writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s (Dream Scenario) provocative style and reveal Emma’s secret despite potential objections. Therefore, if you wish to experience The Drama without prior knowledge, as A24 intends, you should stop reading now.
During her troubled teenage years, influenced by online glorification of gun violence, Emma harbored fantasies of carrying out a school shooting. Flashback sequences (featuring Jordyn Curet as the younger Emma) illustrate how she brought her father’s shotgun to school but ultimately abandoned her plan, discarding the weapon in a lake before dedicating herself to anti-gun-violence advocacy.
Is discovering such a shocking detail about your beloved fiancée just days before pledging eternal commitment destabilizing? Absolutely. However, do Charlie or any other characters in the film react in a way that feels genuinely human, rather than as a mere plot device? Not really. Instead of leaving that terrible pre-wedding dinner (which ends with the first of several instances of projectile vomiting) to have a serious discussion about Emma’s past and committing to couples therapy immediately—or even delaying the wedding—Emma and Charlie choose to power through their final week before marriage by pretending everything is fine. While posing for an upbeat wedding photographer (Zoë Winters, also known for her role in the similarly discomfiting rom-com Materialists), their forced smiles and rigid postures are so unconvincing that the photographer practically has to manipulate them into poses suggesting actual closeness or affection.
Zendaya’s Emma remains a whimsical, dark school shooter figure—and if that description offends you, just wait until you watch the film.
Charlie and Emma’s domestic life also sours significantly. Their once passionate sex life dissipates as Charlie finds himself unable to perform, and minor details, like a coffee mug emblazoned with the joking phrase “Coffee or I’ll Shoot,” trigger intense arguments that jeopardize their impending wedding. Both also begin to act out at their workplaces: Emma sabotages a professional project with Rachel (who remains visibly disturbed by her friend’s dinner-table admission), while Charlie makes an odd confession of his own to a museum colleague (Hailey Benton Gates). By the time their wedding day arrives, both the bride and groom—but particularly Charlie—are steeped in deep paranoia and self-doubt, foreshadowing problems for their marriage and their mental well-being.
Similar to Borgli’s prior work, the Nic Cage-led psychological thriller Dream Scenario, The Drama suffers from a common issue found in high-concept, uncomfortable films (such as Eddington, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) that have become a hallmark of A24: The script’s enthusiasm for introducing provocative, grand ideas far exceeds its commitment to exploring them deeply. There’s something not only undeveloped but offensive in how little attention The Drama devotes to Emma’s internal world, despite her being ostensibly the film’s co-lead and the character whose teenage crisis serves as the convenient catalyst for the plot. What truly motivated her drunken confession of that long-buried past, and what drove her to contemplate a mass shooting in the first place? The brief, largely wordless flashbacks hint that teenage Emma’s profound sense of alienation stemmed from her identity as a mixed-race student at an exclusive Southern private school. Yet, we gain minimal insight into how the present-day Emma has processed that dark period in the intervening years. Charlie’s bewilderment that his kind, loving, and composed fiancée could harbor such a secret acts as a stand-in for the audience’s own confusion. Despite Zendaya’s appealing and effortlessly likable performance, Emma remains a mere narrative device, a whimsical school shooter type—and if that description sounds crudely offensive, just wait until you experience the film.
For the sake of the escalating plot, leading to a “how much worse can it get?” wedding sequence, Emma’s past transgression could have easily been any other mistake. This is because the film’s primary goal isn’t to provide commentary on the gun-violence epidemic, but to extract comedic value from the social discomfort her revelation causes. This does generate some uneasy laughter, largely thanks to Pattinson’s self-deprecating portrayal of the well-meaning but timid Charlie. Pattinson has consistently sought roles that allow him to inflict humiliation upon his handsome persona, and this part provides ample opportunity for him to do just that. Even if his character’s writing is no more coherent than Zendaya’s, Pattinson benefits from substantial solo screen time to lead poor Charlie through his nervous, self-destructive journey.
The Norwegian director Borgli, much like the English expatriate Charlie, observes American gun culture from an external perspective—a perfectly valid starting point for an examination of the school-shooting crisis, were it not for the profound lack of curiosity shown by both the filmmaker and his main character. It appears Borgli’s interest lies not in the phenomena of gun violence and online radicalization themselves, but in the social awkwardness that arises from discussing them. The Drama‘s title might be interpreted as a commentary on the film’s own tonal instability, existing in an ambiguous space where satire, romantic comedy, and cringe humor intersect. This genre uncertainty is intended to discomfit and unsettle the audience, an admirable artistic goal provided the creator adopting this edgy stance has something substantial to communicate.
Borgli’s Dream Scenario, despite its compelling strangeness, ultimately devolved into a shallow critique of “cancel culture” in its concluding moments. (The recent reappearance of an unintentionally revealing personal essay by the director, detailing a past relationship with a high school girl ten years his junior, implies he might have personal stakes in the “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” challenge.) As for The Drama, it exhausts its major thematic ideas—and seemingly its empathy for its characters—before the audience can develop any genuine investment in the unfolding narrative. Are we meant to hope Emma and Charlie reconcile, or to anticipate their grim future with dread? The filmmaker’s decision to base The Drama’s plot on such a sensitive topic as a school shooting feels like a superficial parlor game, not unlike the one proposed by Haim’s Rachel. What if we all confessed our worst deeds, and one of those deeds was a film?