Film Review: The Drama
Film
The Drama
Directors: Kristoffer Borgli
A24, Live Free or Die Films, Square Peg
In Theaters: 04.03.2026
DISCLAIMER: While we here at SLUG try not to spoil anything for you dear precious readers in our humble film reviews, there is no way for me to engage in any meaningful conversation around the plot of The Drama without spoiling the film’s major plot twist. So venture ahead, if you dare!
The Drama follows young Boston couple Charlie (Robert Pattinson, Twilight, Remember Me) and Emma (Zendaya, Challengers, Spider-Man: Homecoming) as they prepare for their upcoming nuptials. We see their meet-cute, their sex life and all the ongoing tasks they have ahead of them before the big day. Though things take a turn when, during a food-tasting for their wedding menu, Charlie and Emma along with another couple (Mamoudou Athie, Kinds of Kindness, and Alana Haim, Licorice Pizza) play a nasty drunken game of “What’s the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done.” Things are relatively mundane until we get to Emma. Her confession: when she was a high-schooler, she planned and almost executed a mass school shooting. It’s the reason why she’s deaf in one ear, with a target practice gone wrong. What follows is a massive spiral on Charlie’s end, backlash from Emma’s friends (and fiance), incontinence and infidelity.
I’ll give you a second to catch your breath because that’s a lot to take in. School shootings are a heavy and heartbreaking topic. It’s an issue our country still struggles with today and not what you would think of as being a plot point for a romantic dark comedy. That being said, Kristoffer Borgli (and this will probably be my most controversial take out of all my SLUG reviews) handles it far better than I would’ve ever anticipated. Borgli is known for being what the pretentious call a “provocateur.” Yet with The Drama Borgli isn’t anti or pro anything, he merely floats the idea out there and what is caught is up to the viewer. You can think any which way you want about it, but it feels like art in its purest form.
If you followed SLUG’s coverage of Sundance earlier this year, you might’ve been so kind as to glimpse my review of the film Run Amok: a story about a young girl who bases a musical off a school shooting that took place at her school ten years prior. Now Run Amok does what The Drama is being accused of. Everyone up in arms about the film accuses Borgli of making light and poking fun at gun violence in America, though the only time that happens is in regards to the person that thought about being an infamous, larger-than-life monster and not actual victims themselves. There is truth in his mockery — it’s a silly concept: a teenager dons a “Columbine” online persona because she doesn’t have any of the tools to deal with the big feelings that come with being a teenager. Until a different mass shooting indirectly impacts her and makes her reflect on how insane the whole idea was and becomes an outspoken anti-gun activist.
Borgli also does an incredible job in his surrealist staging and intercutting of young and old Emma, making you question if the Emma we’re seeing as the film progresses is actually her, or the blown out delusions of her fiancé Charlie. One could argue, a commentary on this reoccurring notion in media that men tend to take women’s problems and make them their own. To add to that point, there is a lot, and I mean A LOT, to unpack in this layered film yet it never feels clunky or like it’s losing its own plot during its 106-minute-runtime. It really does thrive the most when it comes to simply just being a very well-executed example of filmmaking.
We’ve all been on the spectrum that is the teenage emo phase of life and have all done things that make us shameful and embarrassed, whether big or small. Who are we to dole out judgement to others? Especially when our main character does exactly what the cancel culture claims it wants people to do: change! Life is not black and white, friends. It’s just one big shitty blob of grey! Go see The Drama in a packed theater for the full cringe experience and fish what you want out of it! —Yonni Uribe
Read more film reviews from Yonni Uribe:
Film Review: Undertone
Film Review: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
