Have You Seen 'The Drama'?: A Review on One of the Year’s Most Anticipated Films

Design by Ingrid Ibarra

By Ingrid Ibarra

The Drama, starring A-listers Zendaya and Robert Pattinson who play Emma and Charlie respectively, made buzz online long before it hit theaters. The dark romantic comedy, directed by Kristoffer Borgli, released April 3rd, 2026. Borgli is a Norwegian filmmaker who also made Dream Scenario (2023), starring Nicholas Cage, and Sick of Myself (2022). Borgli has a natural talent for taking seemingly normal scenarios and using dark humor to explore themes such as love and cancel culture. The film has ignited discourse pertaining to gun violence, the dangers of media access and how we, as a society, should or shouldn’t judge others for how they interact with the daily violence depicted by the media. 

When the trailer was released, we learned that under the surface of this seemingly beautiful and perfect relationship, there was something darker or sinister. Theories spread online about what could be expected and many came to their own conclusions about what the movie would turn into — how dark it could potentially become. During the menu testing for the protagonist couple's wedding, they invite Mike and his wife Rachel, originally Charlie's friends, who are the best man and maid of honor. After a couple of glasses of wine and some shared laughter, Rachel pushes her husband to tell the group what was the worst thing he has ever done. After everyone playfully shares their twisted tales of varying severity, Emma goes last and shares that when she was 15, she planned and almost executed a school shooting at her Louisiana high school. Immediately after no one believes her, Rachel gets upset and brings up her disabled cousin who was a victim of a shooting. It is clear she does not think it was funny. 

With the wedding less than a week away, Charlie goes through a mental breakdown trying to understand the person who he thought was the love of his life. This moral dilemma sends him into a spiral where he asks himself if she is safe to be with; he creates delusions in his mind asking if he should go through with the marriage. The movie takes a twist, and with an original score and a captivating soundtrack, we as the audience are on the edge of our seats trying to figure out what’s going to happen next. It asks many questions, but one that stuck with me was: Can we be loved entirely by anyone? If everyone knew all the horrible things about you, could they still love you the same way? The film does a fantastic job of asking this question and later making the audience wonder what we would do in Charlie's — or Emma’s — position. 

The complexity of the situation requires a lot of nuance because the potential school shooter wasn’t the typical figure we have seen again and again on the news: a white male. In this case, it is a black woman who eventually found herself out of that dangerous headspace. If Charlie was the one with the same secret, there would be no discussion. But, the film does an articulate job of making Emma the protagonist and not the antagonist. We as the audience root for her because we get to see inside her experience as a 15 year old girl with unsupervised media access. We learn about her complicated home life along with her experience being bullied at school. The real villain of the movie is Rachel, which seems to be a common opinion among viewers online. She represents a privileged white woman who will hold others to a pedestal that even they can not reach. Rachel is not innocent, and when she revealed her secret of leaving a disabled child trapped alone in the woods overnight, she quickly laughed it off and felt no remorse. In more than one way. it was more harmful and more consequential than Emma’s plan that was never executed. 

This film made us laugh, wince, cry and reflect. It stopped the world and has taken over pop culture discourse across multiple platforms. As these important discussions continue online, we must work together to decipher why we would be mad at someone like Emma instead of the system and laws that have allowed this to become the new normal. Charlie makes an interesting point: Imagine all the people you walk past every single day who have thought about doing — or have done — something just as terrible. The truth can be quite disturbing. In a modern world where we have become desensitized to horrible events that take place each and every day, it's easy for each of us to feel hopeless, but films like The Drama call that out and make us aware of our own individual power.

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Ingrid A. Ibarra is currently a junior at the City College of New York studying English Literature, with a minor in Economics. She enjoys walking around the city, watching movies and tv shows, crocheting and daydreaming.