Confession: I intend to see The Drama but I’m not sure I want to catch it theatrically. Okay, I may catch it this evening but while deliberating this I decided to ask Grok to write an HE parody review:
I saw A24’s The Drama last night at one of those smug little screenings where everyone’s pretending they’re not there to gawk at Zendaya and RTPatz pretending to be normal people having a meltdown. And this thing is a sleek, serpentine little viper of a movie, lemme tell ya. It’s cringe, all right, and it won’t let go until the credits roll and you’re left wondering why the hell you’re suddenly questioning every relationship you’ve ever had.
Kristoffer Borgli (the sick fuck who gave us Sick of Myself) has made what feels like an anti-romcom for people who’ve actually been in a real relationship.
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play Emma and Charlie, this impossibly photogenic couple about to get married, and they’re happy…too happy. The kind of happy that makes you lean over to your plus-one and whisper, “Something awful is about to happen.”
And brother, does it ever! Without spoiling the precise nature of the “one damn confession” (though the trailer sorta kinda ruins it like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving), the film detonates their perfect little world in ways that are by turns hilarious, excruciating, and weirdly erotic in that uncomfortable “am I supposed to be turned on by emotional carnage?” kind of way.
Pattinson is doing that patented Pattinson thing where he looks like a Victorian ghost who wandered into a SoulCycle class and decided to commit to the bit. He’s twitchy, haunted, funny as hell, and somehow still hot in the way only beautiful disasters can be. Zendaya, meanwhile, is operating on another plane. She weaponizes stillness like a sniper. One slow blink from her and you feel like you’ve been emotionally waterboarded.
The script is vicious in its precision. Borgli has an almost sadistic ear for the way people who love each other can still eviscerate one another with a perfectly timed sigh or a loaded “it’s fine.”
The supporting cast (including a couple of scene-stealing weirdos I won’t name because spoilers) are all operating at peak “A24 character actor who’s been waiting their whole life for this exact monologue”.
The Drama isn’t for the Marvel crowd. If you need your hand held and your catharsis spoon-fed with a nice little dessert served at the end, stay home and rewatch Anyone But You. The Drama leaves you raw. It’s messy. It’s mean. It’s funny in the way that real pain sometimes is when you’re watching it from a safe distance.
Zendaya and Pattinson have more chemistry arguing about whether a certain revelation counts as “technically cheating” than most couples have during actual sex scenes in other movies. I laughed. I squirmed. At one point I audibly groaned in the theater and the guy next to me (some hipster in a backwards baseball cap) shot me a dirty look like I’d violated sacred cinema space. Sorry, pal — this movie earns the groans.
Bottom line: The Drama is one of the most uncomfortably entertaining films I’ve seen in a while. It’s not perfect — there’s a third-act swerve that feels a little too pleased with itself — but it’s alive in a way most 2026 releases aren’t. Zendaya and Pattinson are giving career-high work, Borgli is a twisted little genius, and A24 continues its reign as the studio that understands that adults still exist and sometimes want to watch beautiful people destroy each other for two hours.Go see it. Then go home and stare at your partner a little too long. See what happens.