The trailer for The Drama makes a very specific promise: hot-but-in-an-approachable-way people, tasteful interiors, and buttloads of pre-wedding emotional ups and downs (but mostly downs). The A24 production starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson introduces them as a perfectly well-adjusted couple who are about to be married. They have interesting-sounding jobs, a beautiful home, and great sex. However, all this pleasantness quickly unravels into a series of unhinged confessions, moral crises, and chaotic decisions that make this ordeal of a wedding way more dramatic than it should be.
Since its release on Friday, the film has garnered divided opinions. Some have praised it for being insanely entertaining, while others seem personally offended by it. Of course, I managed to watch it even though I was meant to be present at a family wedding. Was I trying to escape the drama in my own family under the guise of work? Interpret that decision however you like. Though, I must admit, watching it in the middle of a family wedding weekend is perhaps the most immersive way to experience it.
Below, every thought that crossed my mind while watching the film, ranging from “so effing true and relatable” to “call the authorities”:
Warning: Major spoilers ahead!
1. Hello! Stalker alert! You may want to talk to someone, but please don’t take pictures of their things without consent. The meet-cute is more meet-awkward, but we’ll take it.
2. Of course, it’s natural to lie about your interests when you first meet someone. You’re looking to impress them and show how much you have in common. It’s the foundation of modern-day courtship.
3. He’s a museum curator. She’s an editor in publishing. They share a lovely home with mid-century furniture and artworks on the walls. They seem like a really sorted couple who have their priorities straight and believe in using ‘inside voices’. Ideal.
4. A24’s go-to costume designer Katina Danabassis does a great job with normal-people clothes. (See: Past Lives and Materialists for further proof.) I love how aggressively regular they look and the fact that they can’t be arsed to accessorise, which is great—like normal people with jobs, you know. No statement pieces, just great vibes.
5. Dance practice! I don’t know why they spend money hiring an instructor when neither of them really seems interested in it.
6. Is the instructor right to remind them that a wedding is “inherently performative”? Absolutely. Just go to court and get it over with.
7. Is catching your wedding DJ smoking heroin really a dealbreaker or does that make it more fun?
8. Of course, you should get drunk at your tasting and ask for seconds. What’s skin-contact wine and should I be drinking it?
9. Would you tell your partner the worst thing you’ve ever done? Partner, fine, but in front of an audience? This definitely isn’t a dinner-appropriate game.
10. The revelations roll in quickly. Rachel seems like a really mean person. Like, locking a “slow” kid in a closet in the forest overnight is just diabolical. She gets away with it and doesn’t ever come clean about it. Makes me wonder what else she’s hiding. She says he was found the next morning, but was he really?
11. We’ve moved on from Charlie’s cyberbullying confession way too quickly. He seems too paavam now. If he was really a menace as a child, then what happened?
12. Oh, Emma! I know you’re drunk from all that skin contact, but this is not something you say out aloud at dinner!
13. Emma confesses she planned to shoot up her school as a teenager. Is this bad? Yes. Though I can’t comment on how bad exactly because I don’t live in the great nation that is the United States of America.
14. Ok, Rachel really is hella dramatic. She needs to calm down. Like, you almost killed a kid.
15. Call the cops??? For a crime that wasn’t committed? That too over a decade ago? I don’t think that’s how first responders work…
16. I love their home so much, and all this Knoll furniture, though I wouldn’t have the guts to climb this spiral staircase after downing multiple bottles of wine.
17. The photographer saying “shoot, shoot, shoot…” is really sending this theatre. They can’t stop laughing!!
18. I love that her ring is not the generic oval or emerald cut set on a simple band that you see on every hand these days. It’s a three-stone ring—which, I believe, is symbolic for past, present, and future? V thoughtful work by the costume department and v cute!
19. Do you really need to confront your DJ about what she’s doing when she’s off the job? She looks sober at work. We’re spending way too much screen time on this irrelevant subplot.
20. What’s worse? Actually doing something bad and feeling next to no guilt about it or planning to do something really fkn horrible (as a child, at 15!) and not going through with it? Obviously the former. Petition to send Rachel to juvie.
21. Oh, the high and mighty Rachel would like to take permission from her cousin Sam—who was paralysed due to a mass shooting—to attend the wedding. This seems highly unnecessary, but I feel like Rachel’s the kind of person who needs to outsource her conscience for theatrics and generally just thrives on drama.
22. Charlie’s really going through it. Why are you harassing a woman in a wheelchair on the street? She doesn’t know you! This guy really has boundary issues.
23. Sam telling Charlie her puffer is from Uniqlo is just so random and funny to me.
24. Rachel, you’re unprofessional for going AWOL. As the MoH, you should at least text Emma you’re not interested in the role anymore.
25. Emma tells Charlie she’s deaf in one ear because she held the gun too close while practising with her dad’s rifle in the woods. How has the reason for her partial deafness not come up in their two- to three-year relationship?
26. I don’t think we needed this montage of a fully grown man, Charlie, with a 15-year-old Emma holding a rifle. This feels creepy. No wonder that essay is making the rounds. This should’ve been flagged in editing.
27. Ok, so she was really into the aesthetic of guns, etc. But I’m sure that doesn’t make you want to shoot up your school. But if this looksmaxxing-to-manosphere pipeline has shown us anything… I guess the internet can warp your brain.
28. Ok, so she is bullied at school! It’s tough moving towns, and kids are mean, but does it warrant planning to kill everyone?
29. Oh, there’s an accidental redemption arc. Emma is now a gun control activist. This is so funny but a good reminder of how impressionable young minds can be. Completely believable (in a very serious, non-sarcastic way).
30. Good call @ Emma for getting Rachel off the work gig she got her. She’s being a neg.
31. Emma wears a lot of really good knits. I want all of them. Danabassis sourced logo-less jumpers and sweatshirts from brands, like YMC, 6397, The Great, which are all...great.
32. A photobook with images of hot women and guns on Charlie’s work desk?! What an interesting coinkydink.
33. He seems deeply unsettled while flipping through the book, though I get the feeling he might start jerking off to these photos.
34. Of course, you should go off the rails and basically word vomit whatever’s plaguing you to your colleague while trying desperately to pass it off as hypothetical.
35. Misha’s actually gorgeous. RIP to her pretty red blouse cause Charlie literally RIPPED it. Pre-wedding jitters are peaking.
36. Not Misha pulling up her skirt and bending over the counter and Charlie just walking away??? This is so fkn funny and sad at the same time.
37. Ok, so he didn’t go through with it. But now he’s got another thing to mull and go crazy over. Congrats, man.
38. It’s the day of the wedding! Emma looks so pretty in this Jenny Yoo gown. I love the cuts on the side—has a quasi-naked vibe but, like, 20 per cent. Chic.
39. Where are all of Emma’s school friends from her activism phase?
40. Speeches! Lol @ Emma’s dad; he seems lovely.
41. The way everyone in the theatre jumped and gasped at the loud bang!
42. Rachel’s super, super nasty for this speech. Low blow after low blow. Poor Emma. Must say Alana Haim is a great actor.
43. This wedding is clearly turning out to be a disaster—they should skip further speeches and hit the dance floor or excuse themselves on account of feeling ill or something.
44. Charlie’s plastered despite not having a lot to drink, at least onscreen. He’s obviously not great with spontaneity. I wish he would’ve kept a copy of his speech and read it out instead of attempting to wing it, because this isn’t gonna go well.
45. Emma’s mortified, as is everyone else in this theatre. It’s so, so bad I’m cringing so hard. This just went from bad to worse to worst. A living nightmare.
46. Woah @ Misha’s boyfriend’s headbutt. I’m surprised Charlie hasn’t broken his nose despite all the bleeding.
47. Emma’s thrown on an orange puffer over her wedding dress and fucked off. I don’t blame her.
48. I love that Charlie’s just thrown on his windbreaker over his bloody shirt and gone to the diner to get a cheeseburger and Diet Coke like everything’s normal.
49. Emma’s here! I’m crying literal tears. They’re starting over. It’s a meet-cute! This is true love.
50. I really enjoyed this movie despite all the criticism. The focus of the movie clearly wasn’t so much about the twist (which is revealed in the first 15 minutes if the movie) but about how little or how much it takes to destabilise a relationship that looks great on paper (a poorly timed question by a very bad friend, who probably drinks too much). I love the idea that it’s never too late to start over (even if your wedding was a big fkn flop). And I love a bookend! This one’s for the romantics.
