When an advertising campaign actively avoids telling you what a movie is about, sometimes there’s a damn good reason for that. Today I saw writer/director Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama, which is being sold by A24 as a romantic comedy. A24 pulled out all the stops for this ad campaign. There was a fake engagement announcement for the film’s central couple in a newspaper, they had a wedding website, there was a themed wedding chapel open briefly, where star Zendaya was rumored to show up, and they did a whole hotline thing where the cast took phone calls and gave relationship advice. All the pieces were in place for a fun, frothy good time. That is not what this movie is. At all. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into when I sat down to watch this film, and I don’t think you should either. Because if The Drama is going to work for you at all, it’s going to be all to do with the element of surprise.

Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) meet cute at a coffee shop in Boston. Two years later, they’re engaged and it’s the week before their wedding. They’re at a dinner with friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie), they go around answering the question ‘what is the worst thing you’ve ever done?’ Emma has an answer that leads Charlie to question everything he’s ever thought about Emma, something that leads him to question if he should go through with this wedding to begin with.

Emma’s answer to that question is something a lot of people have spoiled online, but I didn’t know about it going in, so I’m not going to spoil it for you. You can go find that online if you want to, but you’re not going to find it here. This reveal is going to be something anyone would have a very strong reaction to. You’re either going to lean in and want to know more, or it’s going to be a firm and decisive ‘nope!’ for you. I found the movie bold, mean, shocking, unpredictable and often very funny. And I knew going in there was going to be a reveal of some kind – the trailers allude to this. Yet, somehow, this movie still managed to shock me. But I think it’s more than just shock value. The Drama is a perceptive and sharp film about how little you can really know about the person you spend your life with. It’s a cringe comedy that doubles down on the cringe. And it’s a hell of a date movie. 

Zendaya seems to be very smart about the roles she picks, and there seems to be some risk involved in a lot of her choices, and after I saw Challengers I knew I’d watch anything Zendaya did moving forward. And I’m sure there will be video essays and think pieces galore about what’s really going on with Emma. She’s not a ‘love her or hate her’ character, and she’s neither a protagonist nor a villain. She’s complicated and layered and possibly not even redeemable. The less said about her character, the better, but it’s undeniable that Zendaya makes her fascinating to follow the whole way through. 

Robert Pattinson has also made a lot of interesting choices as an actor, following the beleaguered film series that put him on the map. His choices are always fascinating to me, and this is no different. Charlie’s moral conundrum is the core of this movie, but he’s not a portrait of moral clarity himself. He’s also making complicated choices, and those choices are sometimes unsympathetic. But like Emma, I kept wanting to learn more about this character. Pattinson and Zendaya are actually in three films together this year, with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and the long-awaited Dune: Part Three scheduled to release later in the year. It would be hard to leave this movie not wanting to see what Zendaya and Pattinson do next.

Alana Haim first impressed me as an actress in Licorice Pizza, five years ago. I’ve always been a fan of her music, but that film proved she was capable of more than I realized. She hasn’t gotten a lot to do in film since then, a lot of small roles that don’t make great use of her, but she’s got a very juicy supporting role here. Mamoudou Athie, who admittedly has less to work with than Haim, is still a solidly subdued counterpart to the big personality of Haim’s character. 

Arseni Khachaturan, who has previously worked for Luca Guadagnino, is our cinematographer, and it’s very clear The Drama is shot on film and not digital. There’s some scratches that occasionally appear onscreen and I enjoy the throwback vibe of that. Daniel Pemberton composed the score, and it’s a great showcase for his range, as it’s notably the polar opposite from his Project Hail Mary score, as we heard a few weeks ago. Joshua Raymond Lee edited the film, and it uses this kind of zippy flashback structure early on that I found compelling. Production designer Zosia Mackenzie is responsible for creating a very specific Boston that’s aspirational and affluent, but also a place you’d never want to live. 

A few years ago, writer/director Kristoffer Borgli made the film Dream Scenario, starring Nicolas Cage, another A24 release. Where The Drama fails is exactly where that film did. Borgli simply does not know how to stick the landing. The ending of The Drama seems like a cop out in the moment, and the more you think about it, the more frustrating it is. It’s not as sharp or as clever, or as mean as the rest of the film. It lets its characters off the hook in ways I found disappointing. All the more annoying because almost everything that precedes this ending works so well, and is so surprising and so dark. An ending like this that undeniably and decisively feels like a shoulder shrug, feels like a betrayal not only to the audience, but to the rest of Borgli’s own film. The ending of The Drama isn’t quite as awful as the ending of Dream Scenario, which in my opinion ruins that entire film, but it’s easy to imagine more interesting ways this could have gone.

There’s a strong chance The Drama will be very much not for you. In fact, I predict a lot of people will find this film distasteful at best, and appalling and irresponsible at worst. I would disagree, I think the film has a strong point of view, and takes its dark subject matter seriously, and doesn’t undermine what it’s trying to say. But also, I can’t really argue anyone bashing the film because those perspectives would make sense as much as anyone who’s praising it. From my vantage point, however, the film is a sharp, chaotic, hilarious, brutal and effectively disturbing experience. It’s so uncomfortable, it almost feels like watching a horror movie for a lot of the runtime. The ending kind of derails the whole thing, but for a long time, The Drama is a bold, bleak and hilarious date movie that’s sure to generate a lot of fascinating conversations.