9/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars

Seldom do I leave the movie theater with the only thought in my mind being, “Yeesh.” Even after rigorous training through YouTube cringe compilations and Tim Robinson’s signature brand of comedy, I’m afraid that I’m not made of marble. There’s something about the word “cringe” that, while completely co-opted by the internet age, exists as a catch-all for anything that feels unpleasantly yucky. There are two paths for cringe: the intentional and the unintentional. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing worse than an unintentionally cringey movie. When done right, though, intentional cringe toes the tautest of tonal tightropes between laugh-out-loud humor and unadulterated emotional agony. And, I doubt there’ll be any movie from this year that’s as intentionally cringey as Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama.

I first became familiar with Borgli in 2023 through his surrealist cancel-culture satire Dream Scenario, a hilarious yet uneven comedy (which has aged poorly in light of recent events) where everyone starts dreaming about a college professor played by Nicolas Cage. Although the last act fell a bit flat for me, I enjoyed Dream Scenario at the time and eagerly looked forward to his next outing. His debut, Sick of Myself, is similarly absurd to Dream Scenario’s fantastical premise, but Dream Scenario’s sense of humor was far less bleak. A fitting mentee to contemporary absurdist Ari Aster (who produced The Drama and Dream Scenario), Borgli likes to tackle topics that most would prefer left unsaid, often using those uncomfortable circumstances as a source of bizarre black comedy.

On the week of their wedding, Emma (Zendaya) reveals her deepest, darkest secret to Charlie (Robert Pattinson), prompting a chain of events that threatens to tear them apart. What starts as an innocuous drinking game with friends snowballs into outrageous proportions, provoking a catastrophic series of events ranging from painfully awkward to excruciatingly brutal. Beyond Emma’s macrocosmic confession, Kristoffer Borgli’s sense of naturalism keeps The Drama grounded in some vein of reality. Gone are the heightened worlds of Borgli’s Sick of Myself and Dream Scenario; The Drama instead exists as an exercise of an absurdist shifting into a grimmer tone. Serious as the subject matter is, The Drama is a pitch-black dark comedy designed to ruffle feathers at every turn.

What follows the revelation to end all revelations is a bone-dry two-hander between Zendaya and Pattinson, where the former is trying to regain the latter’s trust and the latter is trying to make heads or tails of the former. Emma and Charlie’s pre-confession dynamic is endearingly sweet, if somewhat corny, though that sweetness is only for Borgli to sour everything later on. Their post-confession dynamic is reasonably strained, as most of the film’s humor comes from Emma’s secret looming so heavily over their big day. There are some great, genuine laughs in The Drama, but Borgli’s screenplay and direction are instead jam-packed with nervous laughter and devastating amounts of awkwardness. I mentioned that intentionally cringe movies walk tightropes; The Drama tiptoes on eggshells.

It’s hard to even talk about The Drama without spoiling the secret, although it’s less about what the secret is than the fallout of said secret. However heavy it may be, we all bring baggage into our relationships in some way. There’s no such thing as a skeleton-free closet, which Borgli takes to a nerve-racking extreme. I’m reminded of the opening lines from David Fincher’s Gone Girl: “When I think of my wife, I always think of the back of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brain, trying to get answers. The primal questions of a marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?”

Strain or no strain, there’s no denying that Zendaya and Pattinson’s chemistry is off the charts. They’re very nice to look at, sure, but they both bring layered complexities to their roles that affect the realism of Borgli’s screenplay. Mirrored by best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and maid of honor Rachel (Alana Haim), the collective downward spiral for everyone who knows Emma’s secret entirely hinges on the cast. The reaction shots in the edit are just as good, and everyone’s comedic timing is simply on point. Borgli’s sardonic sense of humor is as wry as it is bleak, although The Drama rarely veers off tonal consistency. I can’t say with my chest that it’s a fun viewing experience, though I definitely laughed a lot.

As far as movie stars go, there’s nobody on a run like Robert Pattinson’s right now. He first travelled off the beaten path with David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, and the rest has been history for nearly fifteen years. Between career-changing turns in the Safdie brothers’ Good Time and Robert Eggers The Lighthouse, blockbuster parts in Tenet and the titular role of The Batman, or last year’s Mickey 17 and Die My Love, Pattinson is on a mission to work in every possible pocket of contemporary cinema. He taps into a similar patheticism to that of his work in Die My Love, though with a twitchiness that had me in stitches. Greatness is expected from Pattinson at this point, though The Drama wouldn’t work without Zendaya to counter Pattinson’s goofiness.

Though she hasn’t been as long a Hollywood mainstay as Robert Pattinson (real ones know her from Shake It Up on the Disney Channel), Zendaya is similarly one of the most in-demand names in Hollywood right now. She broke out of the Disney Channel shackles through roles like MJ in the Tom Holland Spider-Man films and HBO’s Euphoria, immediately showcasing her range for both blockbusters and prestige dramas in a similar (though less weird) vein to Pattinson. She brings a vulnerable thorniness to The Drama that is both concerning and sympathetic, though almost teetering into enigmatic territory. Between The Drama, The Odyssey, Dune Part Three (all of which co-star Pattinson), Euphoria season 3, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Zendaya’s 2026 is beyond stacked.

By design, The Drama is going to be a pot-stirrer at the very least. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker (Emerald Fennell or Sam Levinson), one would try to skew The Drama into faux-provocative ragebait, but The Drama actually ends up being kind of sweet. If you’re looking for a cutesy romcom starring two of the most beautiful faces in Hollywood right now, I’m afraid The Drama will be devastatingly disappointing. For those looking to be challenged by the movies they watch, The Drama will check boxes while simultaneously pushing buttons. A crowdpleaser this is not, but I like my movies complex and my characters flawed. Only time will tell if The Drama is the controversial head-turner that people are expecting, though I left the theater somewhat uplifted.

Movie Review: Audiences Bear Witness To Zendaya and Robert Pattinson's Perfectly Cringe-Filled Dynamic In "The Drama"