A provocative cringe-comedy with some pointed questions about how well you can ever truly know a person, what we can forgive, and the challenges to confront our pasts. The Drama is about an engaged couple, Emma and Charles (Zendaya, Robert Pattinson), preparing for their big day. During a night of drinking with their maid of honor and best man, who happen to be married, the couples confess the worst thing they’ve ever done. Everyone is laughing until Emma reveals (I’m going to spoil her secret because: 1) it’s early in Act One of the film, 2) it’s essential to better understand the movie’s drama, 3) people deserve to know who otherwise would have no interest because of it) that as a teenage victim of bullying she had planned a mass shooting that she never went through with after a peer died in a different shooting. Charles is trying to square his view of Emma before and after this revelation, scrambling for context and rationalization while haunted by questions over whether these thoughts might resurface. I’m glad that writer/director Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario) didn’t just assign Emma some feat of sexual exploration that made Charles feel emasculated and insecure. That would be too easy and expected. The mass shooting plot is so much more to reckon with, complicated by the fact that Emma declined to make it happen and even became a fierce advocate against gun violence, finding a community in her school that she lacked before. There’s not much in the way of larger commentary specifically relating to mass shootings or gun culture in America, which is a shame. Dream Scenario had some fantastic satire and commentary relating to celebrity, cancel culture, and ownership of identity. Most of The Drama is an awkward comedy of people trying to pretend everything is normal. It can make for great squirm-inducing giggles, like a couples photography session that never loosens up, or Charles trying to come up with analogies to explain his plight but having to keep adding additional context to get people to see things the way he wants. The end is a spectacular combination of misunderstandings and secrets coming to a head. Perhaps most surprising is that The Drama is measured not by human darkness and the capability of harm or self-delusion but in our capacity for hope and empathy. The concept of radical empathy is discussed, about accepting people for who they are and not who you wish they were, and Borgli challenges the viewer to reckon with our own judgements, biases, and limitations. Are we more than merely our worst moments? The Drama thinks so, and so do I.

Nate’s Grade: B+