This review contains major spoilers.
No matter how real and genuinely in love a couple may be, there's no getting around an essential truth: weddings are an act of performance. Whatever variations there may be in the details of that performance, expectations exist and surprises are rare.
The Drama understands this and cracks those expectations wide open with a perverse sense of humor. Filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli's intriguing and disquieting comedy is, to some extent, about the strains of wedding performance, and more acutely, that of relationship performance. It begins with a meet-cute that's less cute than it is kind of embarrassing, in the way straight men can so often be. Charlie (Robert Pattinson), a handsome bumbling Brit, crafts a scenario of mild deception to hit on Emma (Zendaya), the bookish beautiful American he spies in a Cambridge, Mass., coffee shop. Some might call this a relationship red flag, a tenuous foundation upon which to try building a connection with a stranger. (Not unlike, say, lying about your height on a dating app.)
But plenty of people in relationships miss red flags or ignore them completely, and Joshua Raymond Lee's punchy, rhythmic editing sequences quickly reveal that sometime after that manufactured coffee shop flirtation, Emma and Charlie are totally in love and soon to be wed.
Or maybe not — there are red flags, and then there are four-alarm-fires.
During a final menu tasting session with their wedding caterer – having consumed exorbitant amounts of booze — Charlie and Emma are drawn into a round of confessing the "worst thing [they've] ever done," egged on by their best man and maid of honor, married couple Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim). Each person's story is a unique variation of cringe ranging from selfish to downright cruel, but Emma's admission is jaw-dropping, to put it mildly.
When she was 15, she says sheepishly, she "almost did a mass shooting."
Yes, she's serious. No, she didn't go through with it. But now, it's out there in the open, lingering like a dark cloud over the fate of their relationship. And here they are, mere days from having to perform their love for friends and family from far and wide.
The Drama is sharpest when underscoring the differing (and in some cases, absolutely hypocritical) reactions to that dark time in Emma's past while critiquing America's unique addiction to gun violence. (Borgli is Norwegian.) It mines clever comedy from Charlie's internal panic: As the pair tries to continue carrying out their wedding planning as if nothing has changed (meetings with the photographer, the florist, etc.), he's frantically searching for the escape hatch. Suddenly, every little cute or sexy thing Emma's done throughout the relationship is now cast in a sinister light, and Pattinson, per usual, plays his character's emotional journey to the hilt when called for, dialing it back when needed.
Emma's shocking reveal breathes the same smoky air as the 1997 video for The Prodigy's "Smack My B**** Up," which spurred a public outrage for its first-person depiction of a frightening, Trainspotting-like bender taking place over the course of an evening. The "twist" at the end of the video is that the person performing the debauchery is in fact a woman, rather than a man.
Just as the couple's friends are flabbergasted by Emma's past, it's unlikely anyone going into The Drama completely cold would guess that her darkest secret is self-identifying as a would-be school shooter, once upon a time. Someone like her — a lithe, modelesque Black woman who looks like and in reality is Zendaya — doesn't fit the profile, doesn't have it in them to commit such an atrocity.
Statistically and culturally-speaking: That's white boy behavior.
But of course, that's the point. Borgli provokes by suggesting it's possible all of us have it in us to kill, or at the very least, everyone can and has considered what it might be like to kill. He draws a compelling picture of how and why a kid like her could be driven to destruction, and then ultimately abandon those feelings, through flashbacks to Emma's younger, angsty self, played confidently by Jordyn Curet.
A third rail premise like this could offer an explosively rich characterization for Zendaya to sink her teeth into, an opportunity to explore and express a Black woman's anger and depression through narrative roads least traversed. But it's worth noting that the actress and her team asked to be considered for the role as the screenplay was making the rounds; Borgli did not necessarily conceive of it with her or any Black actress in mind. As such, the part is frustratingly restrained and misaligned with the bold concept the movie presents.
Emma is frequently viewed through Charlie’s shocked, mortified, and ultimately flattening perception of her, with little of her own interiority to counter or enhance it.
Emma is frequently viewed through Charlie's shocked, mortified, and ultimately flattening perception of her, with little of her own interiority to counter or enhance it. The screenplay is somewhat titillated by the subversiveness of her gender (in one montage, she poses seductively in their bed, clad in lingerie and cradling a rifle) but completely sidesteps ways that her race might factor into her anxieties and decision-making. That avoidance is fast becoming a given across the actress's projects; Zendaya has more to work with in Luca Guadagnino's Challengers, though it, too, is unwilling or unable to narratively integrate its star's racial background in any meaningful way, to its detriment.
But even if Emma's characterization took place entirely within the confines of Charlie's increasingly distressing imagination, manifesting his worst fears about the person he thought he knew and loved, you might still expect some bite from the actress's performance. There are flickers, but it doesn't feel like enough.
On its own, The Drama lacks depth; if you're going to poke the bear, you should have to confront it. And yet as a viewing experience it's an arresting ride, especially communally, offering up more than enough gristle to chew on long after the credits have rolled.
Copyright 2026 NPR
