When you see a movie called The Drama, you don’t expect a romantic comedy … or do you? Distributor A24 has been cagey about the genre of this film from writer-director Kristoffer Borgli, which centers on the wedding of a young couple played by two attractive stars. Some trailers and ads make it look like a light, sparkling good time; others, a little sinister.
None of this is a shock from the director of 2023’s Dream Scenario, which trod a similar line between cute and creepy. But those expecting a feel-good rom-com will get a surprise.
The deal
Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) prepare speeches for their wedding reception, reminiscing on the beginning of their romance. They met cute when Charlie spotted Emma reading in a café and told her he was enthralled by the same book. Never mind that he was fibbing — Emma was charmed when he confessed he just wanted to meet her. “You turn my drama into comedy,” Charlie enthuses in his speech draft.
With about a week to go before the ceremony, the couple spot their hired DJ (Sydney Lemmon) smoking heroin on the street. This sparks a debate on whether to fire her, which continues as they taste wedding hors d’oeuvres with their friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie). As they wonder which acts are unforgivable, one of them asks a fatal question: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? And then, as the wine flows, all four friends answer.
Mike’s sin is mildly unsavory. Rachel’s, more so. Charlie’s is ugly but banal. It’s Emma’s confession that changes the whole tone of the conversation and puts the wedding in jeopardy.
Will you like it?
Like Borgli’s Dream Scenario, The Drama is essentially a dark comedy built on an intriguing hypothetical. What if your romantic partner seemed perfect … until you learned about a disturbing episode in their past that made you feel as if you’d never known them at all? Could you overlook it? Accept it? Or would you call off that expensive wedding?
While the movie may not be a rom-com, it engages with rom-coms, mimicking and stress-testing their tropes to find out just how much pressure it takes to turn a happily-ever-after into a domestic thriller. The deception that opens the film arguably makes Charlie look creepy. But because Emma chooses to see his awkwardness as cute and Hugh Grant-ish, their romance continues.
Many rom-com plots hinge on misunderstanding or misrepresentation, a theme that Borgli foregrounds in that first scene by calling our attention to the perspective gap between the lovers. Emma is deaf in one ear and has an earbud in the other, so she can’t hear Charlie’s opening line. When the camera focuses on her, the soundtrack cuts out, as if to place us inside her mind. This trick will reappear in the film’s last scene, suggesting how far apart Emma and Charlie have moved — or perhaps have been all along.
Rom-com characters often masquerade as the perfect partner, only to be forced to reveal their true, flawed selves in a humiliating third act. In Charlie’s mind, that’s precisely what Emma has done by not mentioning an aspect of her past. Flashbacks show us the transgression that took place in Emma’s troubled adolescence, as narrated by herself. Then, in a montage that splits the difference between funny and unsettling, Charlie imagines re-experiencing moments in their relationship with the sullen teenage version of Emma (Jordyn Curet). (That montage gets even more unsettling once you learn that the film’s director wrote an essay about the “May-December romance” he had with a teen while in his twenties.)
Borgli broaches tantalizing questions. Is it worse to think about doing something unspeakably bad than to actually do something medium bad? How many of us re-created ourselves in high school or college the way Emma did, leaving unsightly rough drafts of ourselves behind? Should we be judged for the people we used to be?
The Drama doesn’t answer those questions, however, because it only skims the surface of Emma’s perspective, never delving quite far enough to connect her younger and older selves. While both leads give solid performances, and the movie gestures toward evenhandedness, Charlie is clearly the protagonist. The “drama” here is his reaction to discovering his fiancée has a dark side.
If you accept its limitations, you can enjoy The Drama as a cleverly orchestrated cringe comedy about an obsessive man who can’t stop exacerbating his own misfortunes until they escalate into a nightmare. But when it comes time for the film to reveal whether love still conquers all, we simply don’t know enough about both parties in this relationship to care.
If you like this, try…
Dream Scenario (2023; PLEX, Prime Video, Roku Channel, Tubi, YouTube, rentable): In Borgli’s breakout film, Nicolas Cage plays an ordinary guy who suddenly begins appearing in strangers’ dreams.
Past Lives (2023; HBO Max, YouTube Primetime, rentable): The real genre of The Drama might be called “high-concept relationship movies that aren’t romances.” Celine Song’s Oscar nominee, in which a happily married woman gets a visit from her old boyfriend, is a prime example. (Song’s follow-up, Materialists [2025; HBO Max, YouTube Primetime, rentable], edged close enough to rom-com tropes to generate controversy.)
This article appears in April 8 • 2026.
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