The Drama Review: A Mishandled Plot Twist Sinks Zendaya's Dark Comedy

Contains spoilers for "The Drama"

I'm reviewing "The Drama" later than I'd usually like to. I got assigned to review it pretty close to the release date, and by the time I got the assignment, there weren't any more press screenings happening. At "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" press screening earlier this week, I overheard multiple grumblings that A24 wasn't sending out as many invites for "The Drama" as the studio usually does, and that the few screenings that were held happened in smaller venues.

If the publicists were in fact being extra selective with invites, it stands to reason this relates to the general secrecy with which A24 has been marketing this new Kristoffer Borgli film. If you want to know how protective they're being about spoilers, consider that it doesn't actually have an MPA rating yet. It's not going out unrated because of any risk of an NC-17 — the content's safely within the bounds of an R and theaters are treating it as such — but even a basic content warning might edge too close to revealing the film's "secret twist."

The positive side of having to wait until public screenings to watch and review "The Drama" is that now I have no reason not to discuss what the movie is actually about. If you're looking for a "spoiler-free" review, here it is: "The Drama" is a very well-crafted, never-boring dark comedy that is unfortunately completely broken at its core, handling a loaded premise in ways that are unbelievable at best and offensively tacky at worst. So, to actually talk about why it's broken, consider this your spoiler warning for the rest of the review.

Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) are about to get married, but how well do they really know each other? While discussing their wedding plans over drinks with another couple, Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie), they end up on the topic of "What's the worst thing you ever did?" Mike used his ex as a human shield against an attacking dog, Rachel locked a mentally disabled kid in a closet, Charlie cyberbullied a classmate — all these past sins are greeted with varying degrees of laughter.

Then Emma reveals the worst thing she almost did — when she was 15 years old, she almost shot up her school. She filmed manifestos, went deaf in one ear practicing with her dad's rifle, even brought the gun to class, and only didn't do it because another mass shooting happened nearby and stole her thunder. Suddenly nobody's laughing at this story. Rachel, whose cousin was paralyzed in a shooting, is furious, and while Charlie wants to believe that Emma would never do anything violent now, this story continues to occupy his thoughts leading up to their big day.

Is Kristoffer Borgli trying to say something about the issue of mass shootings, or is he using the topic as a plot device to talk about other issues (the possibility of redemption, trust in relationships, the difference between thinking bad things vs. doing them)? If the former, then "The Drama" is a total failure; if the latter, then it's technically successful but also rather tasteless.

Zendaya tries her best with the material, but it's just too hard for me to buy Emma as written. The reasons she gives for the attempt are bullying and loneliness; while those are often factors in school shootings, they're never the only factors. Somehow Emma never went to therapy to discuss these feelings. The movie acknowledges the rarity of female school shooters but fails to explore the psychology of such occurrences. It doesn't once acknowledge the even further rarity verging on nonexistence of Black female school shooters (there appears to be exactly one such example on record). The girl who plays young Emma, Jordyn Curet, is miscast — she does not resemble a young Zendaya, and it's hard to buy them as the same person even if the thematic point is that Emma's grown into a "different person." The fantasy sequences where Charlie imagines young Emma in adult Emma's place play uncomfortably in light of Borgli's own "worst thing" admission of dating a 16-year-old when he was 27.

If "The Drama" is just using school shootings as a plot device for a different story, then the use of that device deserves scrutiny. From my perspective, replacing Emma's "worst thing" with something similarly violent but less politically loaded could have caused the same relationship drama without the same issues of plausibility and exploitation. It must be acknowledged that my perspective is an American one. The filmmaker is Norwegian, and looking over some initial responses to the film, I'm noticing something of an American vs. European divide: where Americans are arguing about whether or not the story's offensive, Europeans are arguing whether all the characters are overreacting to something Emma didn't actually do! 

It is clear that Rachel's reaction to Emma is hypocritical. In terms of the worst things the characters have actually done, her confession is the actual worst, and we all know those types who are super judgmental of others without examining themselves. At the same time, she does have a reason to be sensitive about the topic of school shootings, so it ends up feeling weird to me how she's played as such a shrill over-the-top villain.

I'll give "The Drama" this much credit: it's never boring. I really like how it's edited. Scenes cut off at just the right points, flowing together nonlinearly and interrupted with characters' intrusive thoughts but always clear to follow. It's very successful at building tension, and if Robert Pattinson's twitchiness sometimes borders on overacting, the intensity is appropriate for where the story goes. However offensive one may find it, the dark humor can be funny. I found myself laughing at the early gags in which innocent things start reminding Charlie of school shootings, a la Bart thinking of Sideshow Bob in the "Cape Feare" episode of "The Simpsons." By the time we get to the wedding speeches, however, these gags start to feel really contrived.

After "The Drama," I think I'm done with Kristoffer Borgli's films. "The Drama" is more consistently engaging and technically adept than his previous film "Dream Scenario" (which Looper also reviewed), but even more frustrating — an empty provocation that handles loaded guns carelessly.

"The Drama" is now playing in theaters.