Review: The Drama (2026)
Kristopher Borgili’s The Drama plays like an unholy fusion between the films of Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness) and Woody Allen. It presents a seemingly mundane, upper middle class scenario, explodes it with a ludicrous dramatic escalation, and then uses the aftermath to pick apart the characters and reveal their true colours. It’s amusing, largely due to the charismatically pathetic turn by Robert Pattinson at its centre, but what do we really learn about these characters that wasn’t assumed from the get go?
The Drama is more interested in provocation than profound revelation. At the centre of The Drama and its drama are Pattinson’s Charlie and Zendaya’s Emma, an engaged couple on the eve of their expensive, elaborate Boston wedding. At the dinner tasting, they get too drunk with their best friends, Alana Haim’s Rachel and Mamaudou Athie’s Mike, and play a game of dare to reveal the worst thing they’ve ever done. The drunken confessions spiral from pathetic (Mike used an ex-girlfriend as a human shield against an angry dog attack) to cruel (Rachel locked a dimwitted boy in a closet in the woods when she was a teen) to truly catastrophic. The titular drama at the film’s centre that destroys this happy relationship is that Emma almost committed a mass shooting as a teenager.
It’s telling that Emma’s revelation doesn’t even conform to the very prompt of the game: what is the worst thing you’ve done, as in committed, not planned to do. Borgili demonstrates that to most people, the difference doesn’t matter, and so the way this intention is treated as action leads to the film working as an indictment of cancel culture and thought crime. The film confronts the idea that the mere inclination to do morally abject things is disqualifying from the culture and should be met with condemnation and banishment.
These are interesting concerns, but The Drama doesn’t go too deep into them. If it did, surely it would have Charlie be the would-be school shooter, not Emma, as female school shooters are extremely rare in America. Rather, Emma being the would-be shooter reveals that Borgili isn’t interrogating school shootings but rather using the topic as provocation for provocation’s sake. No topic is more sensitive in an America where school shootings are seemingly more common than thunderstorms. Borgili has some wicked fun with flashbacks to a teen Emma pathetically aping disaffected American teens she watches on the internet, interpreting violence as the only outlet for her alienation. It’s outrageous and pathetic, which summarizes the sweet spot for Borgili’s approach. Borgili is interested in the topic as far as it becomes an arena to examine these banal, petty people in the film. Which again is fine, but it proves accusations of provocation and trolling are not untoward regarding The Drama.
Luckily, Borgili understands how to amuse in the moment and uses his actors well. Pattinson is the standout as his Charlie shifts between charming seducer to neurotic whiner to apoplectic crybaby depending on the scene. The film examines Emma’s past, and Zendaya is good in the role, showcasing more dimensions than she’s usually afforded on screen, but the arc belongs to Charlie. We watch his degradation and laugh at his emotionally inept, cowardly handling of everything in the aftermath of this core revelation.
The supporting cast is also amusing. Alana Haim’s character is presented as a hyperbolic, vindictive bitch—not really a realistic character portrait, but still boldly entertaining, especially as she smiles while shooting pure venom with her eyes. Athie takes the opposite tact as the supremely supportive best friend, but his frank dejection registers some notable laughs throughout the film, not least of which when he gets dumped with the job of managing a backup DJ on the wedding day. Speaking of DJs, the film’s best laugh comes from a seemingly throwaway bit about Charlie and Emma seeing their first DJ smoking heroin on the street—but what follows shows the critical, vindictive judgment they heap on this DJ is core to the film’s entire thematic approach.
Unlike Woody Allen, Borgili attempts to bring some stylistic rigour to the film, mostly in his discursive editing which adheres to the characters’ thoughts and so will jump back in time for insert shots or repetitive moments to give a fuller picture of what’s mentally overwhelming the characters in a given moment. I admire the approach but the execution is a bit haphazard, sometimes confusing the scene rather than illuminating it. It also provides some pacing issues, which, while not the primary sin of The Drama, does contribute to the film stumbling across the finish line after such a propulsive start.
All told, The Drama is an amusing, bitter riff on the romcom, funny and provocative, shallow and posturing, but not a way that’s fatal compared to most movies made in 2026. You watch it for the stars and the ridiculous blowup at its centre. Mining for further depth will likely prove futile, since this isn’t really an exercise in character discovery but character demolition.
6 out of 10
The Drama (2026, USA)
Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli; starring Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie, Hailey Benton Gates, Sydney Lemmon, Hannah Gross.