"THE DRAMA" - REVIEW
There are misleading marketing campaigns for films, and then there is THE DRAMA.
One of the best made, and certainly the most provocative film of the year so far, THE DRAMA is writer/director Kristoffer Borgli’s follow up to 2023’s DREAM SCENARIO, a exploration of the toxicity of social media and the effects of cancel culture, wrapped in a Charlie Kaufmanesque funhouse of existential horrors. That film did not stick the landing exactly, but it gave the viewer plenty to chew on, lots of absurd hilarity, and one of Nicolas Cage‘s best performances.
Similarly, THE DRAMA proves to be an incredible showcase for its appealing and daring leads (Zendaya and Robert Pattinson in their first of three movies together in 2026, which also include Christopher Nolan’s THE ODYSSEY in July, and Denis Villeneuve’s DUNE PART THREE in December), as well as an effective container in which to hold its controversial subject.
More on that.
While Borgli’s new film is less fun to watch than his previous, THE DRAMA is coated in the veneer of a romantic comedy or relationship movie. It is less comedic than you might want (your mileage may vary), but ultimately romantic as Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are about to find out in the week leading up to their wedding how deep their love really is.
Over the last few years, A24 has been playing in bigger budget fair, and they’ve managed to successfully maintain their brand and their personality working within recognizable, commercial genre trappings. I am the target audience for an A24 movie, and many of them end up on my top 10 lists every year. I am always reticent to talk about plot details in film reviews, but because of the film’s packaging, I don’t know how well moviegoers will be prepared to handle the central shock of the drama that is THE DRAMA.
One night while Emma and Charlie are finalizing the wedding food menu over a few bottles of wine with their married friends (Alana Haim of LICORICE PIZZA and Mamoudou Athie of KINDS OF KINDNESS), the conversation switches to “what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?“ One by one, each person at the table makes their confession, and when Emma reveals hers, the shock of it is given the space to be concussive.
At this point, since the studio is not marketing the film this way, I will go ahead and spoil what it is. Normally, I would not want to do this, but it feels like a responsible choice to lay it out there without going any deeper and letting you make your own conclusions about whether this movie is for you, SO IF YOU ARE SET ON NOT KNOWING WHAT HAPPENS, PLEASE STOP READING THIS REVIEW AT THIS POINT BECAUSE THERE WILL BE A MAJOR SPOILER: Emma confesses to planning and nearly carrying out a mass shooting when she was 15 years old, but then changing her mind on the day she was to do it.
END SPOILERS
I posit that it’s the shock of the subject matter (and allowing that shock to work on the viewer) being at odds with the boy-meets-girl presentation that will allow people to actually hear the message. Robert Pattinson and Zendaya are incredible here, as is the writing and the filmmaking. The humor, in my view, lightens up the intensity just enough to talk about its subject in a way that doesn’t becomes prescriptive or sensationalized, and the editing choices (flashes to memory, of things that might happen, of things imagined) help to keep the subject squarely in its sights, but with a bit more sensitivity—a small bit, but it makes the difference—than a director like Ari Aster (who produced this) would do. Charlie can’t help but obsess over it since Emma‘s admission. It models the psychological structure of a film like Stanley Kubrick’s EYES WIDE SHUT, also about a marital confession that sends an insecure partner on an odyssey of the mind. Since a lot of these types of stories tend to be more sexual in nature, flipping the genre on its head in this way adds to the shock of Emma‘s confession in a way that does what the best movies do: allow us to safely explore hard truths and societal ills. I’m sure it also helps the film’s case that Borgli himself is from Norway, and has the freedom of an outside perspective to explore a very American subject without the need to sanitize.
Time will tell, but of the three Pattinson/Zendaya collabs this year, this is likely to be the low-profile one, and certainly the most modestly-scaled and least expensive one… but perhaps the one we still talk about. I hope so.
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Zach is a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Association (MNFCA). For more info about Zach, the organization, or to read other great reviews from other great Minnesota-based film critics, click here: www.mnfca.com