The Drama is ill-conceived from the start, as writer-director Kristoffer Borgli inflicts a contrived construct on stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, one from which they never escape.
They play Emma and Charlie, an engaged couple just days away from marrying. While out with friends (Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie), the conversation turns toward admitting the worst thing each of them has done. (Spoiler ahead.) Emma’s confession—that, as a depressed and disaffected teen, she took a gun to school intending to kill classmates, but didn’t go through with it—sends the rest of them reeling, to the point that Charlie considers calling off the wedding.
Even if you don’t feel that the characters wildly overreact to Emma’s story for dramatic purposes (why not respond with care and concern over who Emma once was, rather than aghast condemnation of who she now is?), The Drama’s choice of school shootings as its instigating topic seems misguided. This is especially true for the moments when the movie plays it for comedy. (During a meeting with the wedding photographer, every time she says, “I’ll shoot…” a loud flashbulb bursts on the screen.)
Zendaya and Pattinson—who in some scenes seem more than game for a bitter marriage movie—aren’t given a chance to salvage any of this, partly because Emma and Charlie’s relationship is chopped up into snippets that could be memories, dreams, or fantasies. On occasion, it’s not quite clear which of those Borgli is presenting or even whose perspective we’re experiencing. (Borgli’s Dream Scenario suffered from a similarly discursive editing scheme.) In The Drama, it never feels as if the two main characters are in conflict with each other as much as they’re in conflict with the film’s form and screenplay.
(4/6/2026)
