Emma did something bad. Really bad. The kind of bad you only read about in the news, and definitely not the kind of bad you want to marry. The problem, though, is that Emma is getting married to Charlie next week. And now Charlie is in a bind. A nauseating bind.
So goes A24’s The Drama (2026), directed by Kristoffer Borgli—one of the most anticipated releases of 2026 so far, most notably for what the promotion doesn’t say. The trailer only tells us the basics. Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are engaged. Emma confesses the worst thing she’s ever done—or, rather, the worst thing she’s never done—over a wedding menu tasting with their maid of honor and best man. And, true to the title, drama ensues. What the promotion deliberately withholds is the nature of Emma’s dark secret, a key detail that arrives fairly early into the movie, consuming the story thereafter.
It’s a provocative choice, and a fruitful one too. When seeing The Drama, going in blind absolutely makes for a better moviegoing experience. Just like Charlie, viewers get to know Emma before they learn what she’s hiding, and, thus, they join Charlie on his journey of discovery and reconciliation. The movie isn’t truly about the secret itself, either. It’s about change, if it exists, and if it is possible to prove it.
The film opens with a meet-cute. In a Boston café—Hoyas might recognize the filming location as a Tatte—Charlie spots a woman reading at the bar. He approaches her and awkwardly trips over his words as he attempts to lie about having read the book. Only, she doesn’t hear any of it; she’s deaf in her right ear. Emma lets him try again, and the two begin as if the first version of events never happened. The opening is sweet, and it eases viewers into the story, but it also plants a central question: if no one witnesses your mistakes, how easily can you rewrite them?
The rom-com energy quickly dissipates after the first act, traded in for a steady rotation of panic attacks, bloody accidents, and stress-induced vomiting—emetophobes, beware. Yet, amid the chaos, the film draws quite a few laughs, some genuine, others from discomfort. The choice to make The Drama a partial comedy is understandable. The deep sense of stress the film invokes can feel suffocating, and moments of levity offer a much-needed reprieve. But, at times, the comedy can also feel misplaced; while the jokes never go so far as to poke fun at Emma’s undeniably shameful past, they do dance around her misdeeds in ways that could distract from their severity.
Even so, the film first and foremost takes on a dark tone. Borgli isn’t afraid to let viewers sit in empty, excruciating silence. In fact, silence is one of the most handy tools in his repertoire. Scene after scene, he holds still on pauses, waiting just long enough to allow discomfort to bubble to the surface. The Drama is not a thriller or a horror movie (not in the traditional sense, at least), but it’s painfully tense, constantly teetering on the edge of becoming one. When the soundtrack does arrive, it comes in the form of creeping, staccato woodwinds that build a sense of queasiness that Borgli allows to fester.
Leads Zendaya and Pattinson both deliver some of their best work to date. Zendaya plays Emma with a delicate mix of standoffishness and raw fear. Her face often flickers with microexpressions, shifting from guilt to defiance to laughter within a single moment. You can never truly tell if she’s being honest, and that’s certainly the point. Pattinson’s Charlie, meanwhile, spends the film circling his own thoughts and second-guessing his feelings. Together, the two create a constantly shifting center of gravity that leaves viewers in a thorny, directionless state.
The Drama is a movie that will get people talking. Even before release, online spoilers began debates over whether certain topics can be portrayed in a nuanced or sympathetic light. But the film never frames anyone as a hero. Nobody is punished for their sins, and no one comes out the other end victorious. The focus remains centered on the morally gray, ruminating on the boundaries of blind devotion and examining if the unconditionality promised in marriage is always good.
The Drama offers no answers. The film only ever gets messier, nastier, and more complicated, never settling on who’s “right.” But, it leaves you with something more valuable than answers: questions that will stay with you long after the lights come up.
