The Drama

★ 1/2 out of ★★★★

The Drama (2026)

Runtime: 105 minutes

MPAA: Rated R for sexual content, some violent/bloody images, language throughout, and brief drug use.

The title reminded me of Gerard Butler's Plane, a movie with a title so memorable because it was so mind-numbingly generic. Now, we have The Drama, written, co-produced and directed by Kristoffer Borgli. I can think of how he'd name movies of other genres: The Action, The Horror, The Comedy, The Animation, The Science Fiction, The Fantasy etc. The list goes on.

Again, this is merely an observation and has nothing to do with the quality of the film. Sadly, there's something wrong with this movie. Clearly, it's well-intentioned in examining the tension in a relationship when circumstances forces its characters to test their bond. It starts off as an unassuming romance, before taking a sharp, dark turn into events that throw themes like true love, gun violence and trust across the board. There's an undercurrent of discomfort the entire time, and the film wants to challenge you, make you think about these things, and ultimately move you. But what use are all of these in service of a hollow screenplay that feels contrived, repetitive and stagnant? Pattinson and Zendaya clearly try to do a ton of lifting with the material they're given, and there are stylistic quirks that include some comedic moments when Charlie (Pattinson) imagines Emma (Zendaya) in her youth and adulthood, holding a rifle. These are all lost in a movie that has zero idea what it wants to say, occasionally bizarrely edited that really takes you out of the moment, if there even was one in the first place.

Read no further if you do not want spoilers; they're an integral part of what I'll be dissecting.

In a cafe, Charlie spots Emma seated facing the window, and tries to approach her by pretending to know about the book she's reading. She doesn't respond. He tries again, in which she tells him that she's deaf in her right ear, hence the silence. You see, Charlie is currently typing his speech for the wedding that'll happen on Saturday. He talks about the first date, what he likes about her, sex, and how his life has changed. It's not convincing, and this matters the most. Why do they exactly click? For the convenience of the screenplay, it seems. Spotting their DJ smoking heroin, they meet up with Charlie's friend and best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie), and his wife and maid of honour Rachel (Alana Haim), discussing about this incident. After a few glasses of wine, each person plays a game where they reveal the worst thing they've done. Mike and Charlie's confessions are light and funny, but the movie treats, in my opinion, two equally dark confessions differently. Rachel confesses to locking a friend with intellectual disability in a closet when she was a child, and Emma confesses to having planned a school shooting at 15, ultimately not following through. Everyone stares at Emma, the score and mood changes, and Rachel starts acting aggressively towards Emma for this "disturbing" act. Wasn't Rachel's confession equally disturbing? Emma cancelled her plans and became a gun advocate, but everyone's willing to look over the fact that Rachel basically tried murdering someone, and what if he hadn't been found by the police? The Drama is strangely trying to position Emma in the wrong, through the elaborate, sombre direction and everyone's disdain of her. I walked out feeling that the whole world was overreacting.

Nevertheless, I tried the suspension of disbelief, hoping the film would try tackling this discomfort adequately. What followed was equally forced and engineered. Charlie tries to process this horrific revelation, while Emma reveals her early life, motivations and desire to change in cuts that are abrupt and poorly edited. I empathised with Emma's trauma and motives, not because of what the film showed and explored, but because of my personal experiences. The tension between them slowly increases, which you can feel from Charlie's fidgety movements and the uneasiness between them as they prepare for the wedding photoshoots. There are occasional arguments, conversations and a lingering sense of disappointment. The structure which I described basically repeats itself for the first half, bashing the viewer with the same themes of gun violence and love, stifling the narrative progression and grinding everything to a halt.

Is Charlie just in shock the entire time? Who really is he as a person? Halfway in, Charlie defends Emma in front of Mike and Rachel, attempting to connect Emma's experience to the broader picture in America, stating that anyone could have the idea of being a shooter, but most don't carry it out. It's a sudden change in character that feels out of place, only for him to fall back to the same process of, well, processing, when Charlie's colleague, Misha (Hailey Gates), converses with him about a partner intending to carry out a school shooting. Misha exists solely to guide Charlie on how he should feel, labelling Emma's behaviour as psychopathic. Strangely, the tension never rises from here. He bursts into outrage but there's no confrontation between him and Emma about her supposed behaviour.

Not to forget, Charlie also re-examines whether he truly knows Emma as a person and whether he really loves her. He deletes his speech and spends the rest of the movie just thinking and contemplating. It's all build-up and no payoff. Which makes it all the more perplexing that during the wedding, Charlie desperately blurts that he loves Emma more than anything and accepts who she is, despite all her flaws. One can sense that throughout the whole journey, Emma has turned a new leaf and is trying to get past this. Her arc is already complete before the beginning of the movie. Charlie's hasn't even begun.

At last, after all the mess, shouting and literal beatings, a dejected Charlie visits Emma's favourite diner, a place she suggested visiting right after their wedding. She walks in too, and reintroduces herself, as if she's meeting Charlie for the first time. It's a nice moment, where everything resets and they start again on a clean slate. So fitting with the film too, because I'd like to restart and forget about what I just saw.