“The Drama”: A Troubled Love Story
Sophie Aguilar | April 14, 2026
“The Drama” poster with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson star in “The Drama”, a new dark romantic comedy written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli. The movie deals with themes of morality and trust. The couple’s relationship is pushed to its limits and put to the test when Zendaya’s character, Emma, reveals a secret about her past.
In the week leading up to their wedding, the couple is joined by their best friends, Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie), their maid of honor and best man, respectively, for a food tasting before finalizing their menu. Mike discusses how before his and Rachel’s wedding, they confessed the worst things they had ever done. The whole group decides to share their answers.
Emma is the last one to share. She says the worst thing she has ever done was plan a school shooting when she was in high school.
Charlie, Pattinson’s character, struggles to process this. After that evening, Emma tries to avoid talking about it, but Charlie will not let her. He wants to understand her, but is hesitant to see this side of her.
Emma and Charlie both try to move past this. Emma regrets ever having the plan and blames it on teenage angst. Charlie loves Emma too much to break up with her, even though it is clear that he feels uncomfortable knowing the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with planned to commit mass murder.
Charlie is putting on an act for everyone- he does not want Emma or anyone else to know how much this bothers him, which leads to his own irrational actions. I felt the internal struggle that Charlie was handling. The way his emotions were portrayed throughout the film were different from Emma’s, we see more of his actions while he is without Emma.
Watching this movie felt like a slow, downward spiral, not knowing how it would end. With the dramatic twist towards the beginning, the rest of the movie leaves you feeling uneasy. You want to empathize with Emma. But like Charlie, the viewer’s perception of Emma is fundamentally changed in a way that cannot be undone. You want to believe that she has changed. But it makes me wonder: how do you know that someone has changed, and how do you forgive a seemingly unforgivable action?
I felt the movie was a nice commentary on the desensitization of mass shootings in America. Emma’s reasoning for planning the shooting was that she “liked the aesthetic.” Clips of 15-year-old Emma are shown with her holding guns, threatening which classmates would be first and creepily staring into the camera.
The movie is set in Boston, Massachusetts. All of the main characters are American, except for Charlie, who is British. This felt like an important part of emphasizing the culture in America surrounding guns and gun violence. The movie spends more time focusing on the shift in dynamic in Emma and Charlie’s relationship, rather than the fact that Emma planned a school shooting.
This movie made me think about what I would do if I were in Charlie’s situation: being so in love with someone but being so afraid of them. In one scene, Emma walks up to Charlie while holding a knife. He jumps and is terrified of what she is going to do. She was simply cutting fruit for a smoothie, but she does not seem to appear remorseful about scaring him. She knows the power she now holds over him.
“The Drama” is an A24 film, so I knew going into it that it was going to be unlike anything else I have seen. I felt emotions that most movies could never imitate. This movie was strange but pulled me in from the start.