Rating: 8.5/10

Spoilers ahead for ‘The Drama.’

Writer and director Kristoffer Borgli brought more than enough drama both on and off screen with his movie “The Drama,” even after the credits rolled.

Before even entering the theater, I — same as many of my fellow young adults with too much free time — adored the marketing campaign for the movie. Film posters were chronologically released with the couple slowly coming undone to mirror the trailer’s tease of the engagement falling apart at the seams. 

A24, the film studio that produced the movie, has garnered a reputation for their aesthetically focused movies that drip with shock factor elements, so going into this screening I couldn’t help but fantasize about all the various reasons a couple would fall apart from a confession days before their wedding. 

Besides, the movie stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, so I was going to buy a ticket even without the intrigue of the plot and inventive marketing campaign.

The pre-drama

The film follows Emma and Charlie — Zendaya and Pattinson, respectively — just a few days out from their wedding ceremony, planning every bit of detail that goes into the big day. From writing their vows to sampling different reception meals, it seems like love is in the air, and the soon-to-be newlyweds are all in for it.

The first few scenes were bliss, as I was sucked into a romantic-comedy-worthy-introduction to our darling couple. Everyone is happy and hot, and wedding jitters don’t appear to affect either of our main characters because the worst thing that happens is seeing their wedding DJ smoking crack on the streets.

Then the stress proceeded as a pit sat in my stomach for the remainder of the movie.

When we make it to a scene advertised in the trailer where Rachel — Alana Haim — awkwardly provokes Mike, her husband — Mamoudou Athie — into sharing that he used an ex-girlfriend as a shield against a dog attack and prompts Emma and Charlie to share the worst thing they’ve ever done, I was more focused on the sheer embarrassment of a couple fighting in front of company.

This awkward scenario continues, asRachel says she locked a disabled child in a closet overnight — and takes no responsibility for it — and Charlie admits to cyberbullying a fellow classmate so badly as a teenager that he was forced to move his whole family away. 

Take this as a lesson to be careful on what can be comfortably shared over a wedding menu tasting, even with your fiance and closest friends around. 

Now, rarely do I watch a film where a plot twist — mind you, one that is expected to be the entire main conflict — catches me completely off guard. But Borgli did just that after he neglected to give away any hint of the twist’s nature in the film’s marketing.

When it gets to her turn to share the worst thing she’s ever done, Emma admits to having fully plotted a mass shooting at her high school. 

The pure shock in the theater after this confession was absolute insanity.

This is less of a jumpscare than it is a tone shift to  psychological horror, as a series of increasingly disturbing videos from Emma’s 15-year-old self shows her recording — or attempting to record —  a manifesto and glamorizing the aesthetics of guns while posing with her dad’s rifle and wearing heavy black eye makeup.

Charlie is — rightfully — distraught over this revelation of his soon-to-be-wife’s past plan. Through a hilariously satirical montage of little Emma in a romantic relationship with Charlie’s adult self that plagues the latter’s mind, Borgli frames a rather introspective moment of absurdity that this teenage girl is the same as the 30-year-old woman Charlie is now engaged to.

There’s something so disturbing about a young girl having thoughts of killing her classmates that our society does not bring up in conversations of gun violence, which makes it almost impossible to believe she may have left that version of herself in the past. Borgli prompts us to debate our own morality in a game of forgiveness with ourselves and those around us, as various levels of tolerance are offered by the four characters.

The post-drama

“I do.”

Oh gosh, the couple somehow ends up at their wedding reception. Guess cold feet can’t hold you back from marrying an almost-cold-blooded killer. 

Rachel spreads that Emma planned a school shooting, Emma finds out Charlie cheated on her in a terrible jump-to-conclusions debacle, Charlie gives his pure embarrassment of a speech, divulging their mistakes to the crowd of guests and then the mistress’s boyfriend unsurprisingly punches Charlie. 

I’m not even joking, this is nightmare fuel and proof that sometimes our actions may be the true definition of us rather than our thoughts, because the relationship between my forgiveness of these characters’ actions seemed almost directly correlated with how uncomfortable they made the scene feel. 

Is Rachel an insecure instigator who believes she can do no wrong, bending over backward with her meltdown of a wedding speech to prove she is oh-so-holy since she doesn’t support kids killing other kids with guns? Totally.

But why did I feel more upset with Charlie’s character after his kiss with a coworker than I did when Emma lied about how she lost her hearing in one ear? Cheating happens a lot in relationships and movies especially, shouldn’t Emma’s confession be worse and more shocking for me to digest?

In a generation obsessed with making everyone feel comfortable, this movie offered me safety to sit in uneasiness and reevaluate my initial responses to these questionable people.

Although it may have been anxiety-fuel for some, I love a good gossip-soaked disaster of events. Borgli kept me on edge in anticipation of the lies and secrets catching up to these anti-heroes in a delightfully — and perhaps oddly — palatable presentation full of beautiful wedding attire and raw characters.

While he doesn’t explicitly give us the answer as to who is right or wrong, he instead offers a film that simply starts these conversations for us to confront our own prejudices and principles, allowing us to craft our own narrative. 

These characters and their actions are all disastrous. Yet, when I reflect on Emma and Charlie’s reunion in the diner at the end, I can’t help but root for them and their love story. It’s unsettling yet hopeful, as they fall back into their old routine of conversation and ask the audience to grapple with the concept of marriage itself. Some things will never be untold or undone, though when marriage prompts us to take on the baggage of our partner, is it better to forgive and forget just as they seemingly do?

Soaked in humor and outstanding performances by the entire cast that complement the conversations it has sparked over relationships, mental health and, yes, the consequences of gun violence, “The Drama” has consumed my mind for days in a most peculiar way as a darkly entertaining social commentary from start to finish.

Thea Findlay is a communication junior and opinion writer for The Battalion.