Publication Date: 04-04-2026

The Drama (2026) review

Dir. Kristoffer Borgli

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

It’s been about four years since I last had a cigarette, but I could’ve used a deep, long, intoxicating drag after watching The Drama. The kind that gives you a nicotine head-rush. It would’ve quelled the deep discomfort, second embarrassment, and hunger for more bad laughs, the likes of which at times overwhelmed yet never alienated me.

Morally complex and rife with its titular ingredient, the story centers around the socially timid Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson) and his bookish partner, Emma Harwood (Zendaya). The prologue shows us how their meet-cute began as a meet-awkward through fragmented flashbacks while the present has them planning their dream wedding. Some will be off-put by this structure from the jump. As integral to The Drama‘s success as anyone is editor Joshua Raymond Lee, who finds an early rhythm when it comes to interjecting flash-cuts or previous moments in time at just the right juncture.

While sipping wine with their friends, Mike (Mamoudou Athie, Patti Cake$) and Rachel (Alana Haim, Licorice Pizza), Charlie and Emma play along in their impromptu game of “The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done.” This pivotal scene comes within the first 20 minutes, but what is revealed, specifically by Emma, has lasting ramifications throughout the remainder of the film. Her secret infuriates Rachel, but more significantly, shatters Charlie’s views of the person he loves, mere days before the wedding. From that moment on, Lee and writer/director Kristoffer Borgli’s vision frequently abandons reality in a way that shows us Charlie’s warped vision of present-day Emma and her adolescent counterpart (Jordyn Curet), both to comic and nightmarish effect in a visual sense.

So important the assembly and structure is to The Drama is evident in a scene that follows an impassioned conversation between Charlie and Emma about what she did (or didn’t do) as a teen. The next scene involves Zoë Winters as a wedding photographer, delivering expertly timed, unintentional barbs to the couple while her ear-to-ear smile never once dips. Winters steals her cameo, and the entire sequence is made sharper thanks to how Lee and Borgli juxtaposed it.

Borgli has solidified himself as something of a cinematic jester. The Drama is his fourth feature, following the critically acclaimed Sick of Myself and the Nicolas Cage-led Dream Scenario. His three most recent films have showed his knack for picking apart humans for their vulnerabilities and insecurities, while also showing their inability to help themselves from being irrational, and frankly stupid, when their control on a situation starts to loosen. With his quartet of characters here, Borgli shows how they’re affluent, college-educated, and each individually aware of their own, most fatal mistakes. More realistically, he shows them as completely unable to process the wrongdoings of others without rushing to immediate judgment.

While at times not achieving the kind of romantic chemistry one might expect, Pattinson and Zendaya are both individually terrific, as they so often are. It’s rare to see Pattinson so neurotic and frazzled, but that’s exactly who he is here, allowing his native English tongue to breathe. Zendaya is yet again entrancing, and while she might not be as explosively emotional as she was in Malcolm & Marie, or as cunning as we saw in Challengers, she’s as gifted at commanding the screen as anyone in film right now. There are few performers in her own generation that have such impressive control over their face, and bear the kind of instant reactive nature that would’ve made her a hit in the silent era.

Then there’s Alana Haim, who we haven’t seen a lot since her breakout pivot into acting with Licorice Pizza. Despite disappearing for long stretches, the animosity and disgusts she imbues onto Emma lingers in the background, and finally comes to a head during a late third-act monologue that’s contemptuous, passive, and active-aggressive. Sloshing a wine glass in one hand while pausing to pick out the perfect words, Haim delivers the type of performance that will take you a moment to shake the next time you see her, regardless of context.

While The Drama builds in a way that has you engulfed in feelings of embarrassment and palpable discomfort, it might’ve behooved Borgli to give us more time with Charlie and Emma to get a better idea of their relationship. While I’m usually all-for a movie starting fast, so to speak, we go from getting a grasp on the origins of their courtship to the couple planning their wedding. Following Emma revealing her darkest secret, the wheels come off on her relationship with Charlie so quickly that we wonder what kind of communication on which their union was built in the first place. Ultimately, this isn’t called “The Romance” for good reason.

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim, Zoë Winters, and Hailey Gates. Directed by: Kristoffer Borgli.