The Drama Review: To Spill or Not to Spill

Planning even the most modest wedding can be endlessly stressful. Narrowing down the flowers, the food, the first dance, a decent DJ? Exhausting. Writing a toast about your new spouse? Nerve-wracking. Playing a drunken game of “let’s share the worst thing you ever did” a week before the wedding? Ruinous.

The Drama – a title that undersells the amount of corrosive comedy squeezed into its blistering 106 minutes – launches right into things, as the soon-to-be married Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) are separately workshopping their wedding toasts. Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario) pairs those work-in-progress speeches to staccato flashbacks of the couple’s first encounter, first date, and so on. It’s a clever way to render a whole relationship arc in bullet points, and to signal some insights into “the story” of Charlie and Emma, in where their narratives link up and where they diverge. That Borgli, who also co-edited the film, is jump-cut-happy only dials up the vertiginous, slightly queasy feeling of this get-to-know-you stretch. Indeed, depending on your worldview, Charlie and Emma’s meet-cute makes just as much sense opening a horror film.

And that is the neat trick of The Drama, a Rorschach test of a movie that reveals more about the audience than the characters onscreen. The Drama doesn’t just invite judgment; it’s coded in its DNA. Back to that “what’s the worst thing you ever did” line of inquiry. The internet, that spoilsport, has already ruined its twists, but I won’t. Only this: I think the film tangles in good faith with its provocative premise, but a viewer with similar lived experience might not find it appropriate for dark comedy. I don’t actually think it’s what the movie’s about; you could insert any number of taboo topics and achieve the same effect. Mainly The Drama is about the disconnect – a frequently chasmic one – between who we are on the inside and how we present on the outside and how even the ones who profess to love us the most prefer the airbrushed, surface version. 

Borgli is exceptionally good at distilling character economically. One character’s offhand revelation that “I used to be ugly” is as efficient as a three-hole punch, and for a visual metaphor, you can’t beat the image of Charlie deleting lines from his wedding toast, in the literal erasure of his idealized version of Emma, now compromised by the mere mortal he’s actually marrying. A leading man determined to convince audiences he’s a character actor, Pattinson continues his wormy streak (see: Die My Love, Mickey 17), delivering a bravura study in spinelessness. And former child star Zendaya gets a fully adult role to stretch out in and show off her range, from sweet to steely to utterly undone. 

Also: vomitous. Just as Emma and Charlie spar over who’s being “performative,” The Drama itself, which tenders three separate spontaneous spewings, prioritizes shocks and giggles over prolonged introspection. To wit: I didn’t care one whit whether Charlie and Emma actually made it to the altar. Doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun getting there.

The Drama

2026, R, 106 min. Directed by Kristoffer Borgli. Starring Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie, Hailey Gates, Anna Baryshnikov.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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