What Is ‘The Drama’ Really About?

By David Fear

David Fear

Maybe you’ve heard that people are already going a little cuckoo over The Drama, the upcoming film starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson (in theaters April 3). Some of it has to do with breathless expectations around seeing the Euphoria megastar and the former Twilight poster boy turned perfect silver-screen weirdo in what, on page, might read like an old-fashioned romantic comedy: Boy meets girl. Boy proposes. Girl says yes. Things get crazy before the wedding. This is a technically accurate description of the premise, albeit one that misses the vibe by a million light-years. We can only assume moviegoers expecting warm-and-fuzzies had missed the film’s early teaser, which suggested this couple’s ship is sailing on ill winds from the get-go. Perhaps those same moviegoers also forgot that both the studio, A24, and the film’s producer, Ari Aster, were responsible for that lighthearted rom-com Midsommar.

A lot of the hysteria also has to do with a bombshell that gets dropped, a “twist” that sends The Drama off into a different direction than the one in which many thought it might be heading. When we meet Charlie (Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya), he’s embarrassing himself by trying to chat her up at a cafe. Spying a novel she’s reading, he googles the plot and pretends it’s his favorite book. She’s deaf in one ear and, because she has an earbud in the other, can’t hear his pitiful attempts at literary sophistication. This is their version of a meet-cute, the kind of flop-sweat anecdote that makes for a sweet relationship footnote when recounted during a wedding. Both of them negotiate over who gets to use it in their speeches. You, the viewer, are already wincing at the sheer stalker-y awkwardness of it all.

Later, while testing out food and wine choices for the reception, the couple and their married friends, Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), decide to play a game. It hinges on a question: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? Mike’s story involves an ex-girlfriend, a dog, and a bad night. Rachel’s answer revolves around an act of cruelty in her youth. Charlie mumbles something about cyberbullying; it’s about as believable as his declaration of love for the book he hadn’t read. Then, perhaps because she doesn’t want to seem mealy-mouthed like her fiancé or maybe because the vino has been flowing freely all night, Emma tells them about her worst thing. Let’s just say in terms of “worst,” it wins the game.

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This unfortunate of moment of TMI honesty changes how everyone in the room sees her, and how everyone in the theater sees the movie — it’s the point of no return for the characters and, for a lot of folks who’ve seen The Drama early on, the moment it loses them. We’re on a new playing field now, and the remainder of this “comedy” jettisons romance in favor of cringe. The friendship between the two couples becomes strained, to put it lightly. Charlie starts looking at Emma differently; the film keeps flashing to the thoughts inside his head, as he pictures not the person she is today but the person he now thinks she was. Emma becomes withdrawn and retreats to bad habits. Charlie’s co-worker, Misha (Hailey Gates), gets roped into the mess as well. You wonder if any of this is in good taste, whatever that phrase means in 2026, or if the sudden introduction of an issue much, much bigger than the film itself isn’t simply a shock value masquerading as shock therapy.

How you fall on that last bit is key to whether you end up viewing The Drama as daring or a heap of dung dropped into a Lismore Diamond punch bowl. Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli has ventured into such danger zones before. He’s best known for Dream Scenario (2023), which acted as a pressure valve for Nicolas Cage regarding meme-era celebrity, but his feature debut, Sick of Myself (2022), walked a similar thin line between thought-provoking and trolling with its dark digs at attention seekers in the attention-economy age. (That it used the very same social issue deployed in the The Drama as part of a punchline in a subplot makes it feel like we should have seen this coming.) There’s a sense of sniggering that lurks behind all of the provocation, which thankfully never crosses the line into full 4chan territory. But the fact that so much hinges on the poking of a wound doesn’t automatically make it audacious in a way that’s taboo-breaking. It’s the sort of too-edgy-for-the-mainstream movie that’s not nearly as edgy as it thinks it is.

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None of that matters in terms of how Pattinson and Zendaya skip merrily through the movie’s minefields, with each leaning into the unpleasant, clammy-palmed aspects of the story with gusto. We’ve become so used to seeing Pattinson swerve left where most matinee-idol types would veer right that even his so-called “normal” characters now feel off in fundamental ways. It doesn’t seem like it would take much to make his blandly oddball Charlie unravel, which makes his reactions to the seismic narrative pivot feel weirdly on-point as well as on-brand. It’s a portrait of someone already uncomfortable in their own skin trying not to crumble entirely. And while it’s tough to say if this is the best work Zendaya has ever done in a filmography that includes Challengers, it’s easy to note that with the possible exception of Euphoria‘s Rue, this is the role that gives her the most space to roam. Forced to cover ground that detours through neediness, regret, rejection, anger, hurt, righteousness, and forgiveness — both for others and herself — she pirouettes past each checkpoint like a pro.

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