culturecues

There is something very simple and very stressful at the heart of The Drama: how much of your past are you actually supposed to reveal before getting married? It is the kind of question that probably should not be pushed too hard in the final stretch before a wedding, but this film takes that exact fear and builds an entire squirming, high-anxiety comedy around it.

Directed by Kristoffer Borgli, The Drama follows Charlie and Emma, played by Robert Pattinson and Zendaya, a couple heading towards their wedding and, on the surface, looking like they have everything in place. Charlie is a rumpled British art historian living in the US, Emma is the kind of effortlessly magnetic woman who seems to have her life together, and their relationship begins with a slightly awkward but charming meet-cute in a coffee shop. Even in those early scenes, though, Borgli does not present it like a standard romcom. There is something uneasy in the framing, the sound design, the pauses, the way the camera hangs on people just a little too long. The film tells you very early that this is not going to stay comfortable.

When one confession changes everything

Things properly spiral during a drunken dinner with friends, when a game about the worst thing each person has ever done takes a much darker turn than expected. Emma shares something from her teenage years that completely changes the mood of the night and, more importantly, the way Charlie starts to see her. From there, the film becomes a nervous, often very funny, increasingly painful look at what happens when one revelation gets under the skin and refuses to leave.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya hold it together

What makes the film work as well as it does is the way Pattinson and Zendaya play it. Pattinson is excellent here, leaning fully into Charlie’s panic, awkwardness and slow emotional collapse without ever making him completely ridiculous. He is twitchy, yes, but in a way that fits the film’s mood, and he keeps Charlie recognisable even as the situation gets more absurd. Zendaya is just as strong, giving Emma a calm, bright, almost unreadable presence that makes the whole thing more unsettling. She never overplays it, which is exactly why the character stays so interesting. Together, they make the film feel much sharper than it might have with lesser performers.

Anxiety, awkwardness and a lot of very bad timing

There is also a lot of humour here, though it is not easy or crowd-pleasing in the usual way. It is awkward, cynical, often very dry, and rooted in the nightmare of oversharing, and social situations that suddenly become impossible to recover from. Borgli clearly enjoys pushing scenes until they become unbearable, then letting them tip into something funny again. That balance is hard to pull off, but for most of the film he manages it.

CultureCues Final Thoughts

What I liked most is that The Drama really does deliver on the title. It is anxious, messy, odd, and at times genuinely excruciating, but in a way that feels deliberate rather than random. It has that brittle, uncomfortable energy running through it the whole time, and even when the idea at the centre of it stretches credibility a little, the film stays watchable because the performances are so strong and the tone is so specific.

If there is one area where it loses a bit of its grip, it is the ending. After building so much tension and discomfort, it does not quite feel as sharp or as satisfying as the rest of the film, and it pulls back slightly just when it could have gone a bit harder. It is not enough to undo what works, but it does leave you wishing the final stretch had been as confident as everything leading up to it.

Still, The Drama is very much worth a watch. It is funny, strange, uncomfortable in the way it wants to be, and led by two performances that keep it compelling all the way through. Pattinson and Zendaya are great in it, and even when the film is making you squirm, it is doing so with purpose.

The Drama arrived in UK cinemas on 3 April 2026.