I have been waiting to watch Zendaya and Robert Pattinson on screen together ever since those BTS photos started circulating at the end of 2024, the ones where Zendaya was yelling at a bad driver.

Last year, when A24 officially announced The Drama, the internet absolutely broke. The marketing for this film needs credit because the whole engagement rollout was insane.

Publicising Emma and Charlie’s engagement through an actual old-school newspaper wedding announcement, followed by a wedding website, save-the-dates, and more; they really committed to the bit.

Then came the press tour, the promo run, and Zendaya’s method dressing as usual, and by then I was genuinely so, so excited for this movie. And honestly? The movie fully matched my expectations.

From the opening scene of Emma sitting alone at a café reading, and Charlie’s cute little meet-cute moment with her, I was immediately locked in, especially with the reveal that Emma is deaf in one ear right from the beginning.

The film then moves through their two-year relationship through flashbacks as they write their wedding vows, which was such a smart move. It lets you see the evolution of their relationship while keeping the pressure of the present, one week before the wedding.

And then everything starts falling apart. They’re dealing with all the last-minute wedding chaos, finalising details, doing tasting dinners, all the usual pre-wedding stress, and then one dinner completely unravels everything.

The couple, maid of honour Rachel (Alana Haim), and best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie) all begin discussing whether the DJ should be fired because they saw her smoking heroin in public.

Emma defends her, saying everyone has probably done bad things in life. And that’s when Rachel (who was being a bit stupid here) suggests they all share the worst thing they’ve ever done. Girl, why?

First of all, if you’re doing something like this, maybe do it with your partner in private? Why are we trauma dumping in a group setting the week before a wedding? Mike literally said he and Rachel had agreed never to speak about their thing again, and she still pushes him to share, only to hesitate when it’s her turn.

If you didn’t want to share, then why even start this whole thing? Anyway, the confessions were wild!

Mike admitted he once used his ex-girlfriend as a human shield during a dog attack. Rachel revealed that she locked a disabled child in an abandoned closet overnight in the woods, and a whole search party had to go out looking for him while she said nothing!? And somehow she still spends the rest of the film acting morally superior.

Charlie then revealed that he cyberbullied a classmate so severely that the boy’s family had to move away, and somehow that just gets glossed over. Do we not see how that kind of behaviour literally feeds into what Emma later talks about?

Then comes Emma’s confession. And this is where the whole theatre shifted. Emma revealed that when she was fifteen, she had planned a school shooting. The reason she lost hearing in one ear, and wasn’t born deaf as Charlie had believed, was that while practising shooting in the forest, she fired too close to her ear. That whole scene was so intense.

Rachel immediately turned judgmental and self-righteous, bringing up that her cousin Samantha had been paralysed in a shooting.

Yes, obviously, what Emma planned to do (which she did not go through with) was horrifying. But what struck me was how everyone gave Charlie and Rachel the grace of “you were kids,” “your brain wasn’t developed yet,” and so on.

But when it comes to Emma? Suddenly, none of that exists. They treat her as if she’s talking about something she did yesterday instead of something from over a decade ago that she recognised as horrifying and actively worked against by becoming a gun control advocate.

The Drama is constantly asking how much one action defines a person. If the two had never seen the DJ, they never would’ve fired her. One single act suddenly became her entire identity. And that’s exactly what happens with Emma. Had they never known about her past, they never would have seen her as dangerous.

The young Emma flashback scenes, played by Jordyn Couret, were genuinely fantastic. The actress did such an incredible job bringing complexity and even a strange lightness to something so serious. It felt disturbingly real, and that’s what makes it uncomfortable. I could see how some young people might spiral into something like that.

Charlie’s paranoia gets worse. He starts seeing guns everywhere and has nightmares. Special mention to the knife scene and the scenes between Charlie and young Emma; they were so weirdly funny to watch. I was literally giggling in the cinema.

Emma and Charlie start seeing each other differently, but they awkwardly continue planning the wedding. The scene of the wedding photographer calling out the “shot list” was so funny; I lost it.

Rachel again becomes annoying. She disappears for days, becomes unreachable, and then blames Emma for removing her from the work project. If you’re ghosting everyone, what did you expect?

Then Charlie goes to work and asks his co-worker Misha what she would do if she found out her boyfriend, Blake, had planned a school shooting in his teens. The whole sequence of Charlie desperately fishing for answers he wants and getting increasingly uncomfortable with Misha’s responses and breaking down in his office, Robert Pattinson absolutely ate that scene, leading up to the mess with Misha.

As she comforts him, Charlie kisses her and pulls back, but it was so weird because Misha had literally just said the worst thing she’d ever done was cheating, only to be fully ready to do it again ten minutes later.

Finally, it is the wedding day, and the whole sequence is one of the most tense things. I actually thought the replacement DJ was going to be the shooter from Charlie’s nightmares.

Emma’s father is giving his speech, as a proud military man, completely unaware of Emma’s past and talking about her activism. He mentions a gun right as a loud sound goes off from the DJ adjusting the speakers. The timing was insane. The whole theatre physically jumped.

Rachel’s passive-aggressive speech followed that. She absolutely hated Emma from the start when she commented, “You look ugly when you cry”. Alana Haim did an incredible job pissing me off.

After Rachel’s speech, Emma runs to the bathroom and overhears Misha discussing a school shooting. She panics, calls Charlie, and drags Misha into the room. But Misha thinks it’s about Charlie kissing her and immediately blurts it out. That whole scene was pure chaos, or should I say DRAMA!!!

My friend and I were literally squeezing each other’s arms in the cinema. There were so many moments in this film when we audibly gasped, cursed, and physically reacted with shock and discomfort.

Later, when Mike announces that Emma will give a speech and the camera cuts to her face, the “no” in her expression, the rage, the sadness, the way she’s fighting tears. Zendaya absolutely nailed that scene. Her face card is actually lethal, and she isn’t an ugly crier at all, Rachel!

Instead of Emma, Charlie gives that awkward speech trying to defend her, and then suddenly confesses to cheating with Misha in front of everyone, followed by Blake attacking Charlie right after. Absolute cinema. The whole wedding scene, from the fake gunshot to Rachel’s speech to Charlie’s confession, had me on the edge of my seat.

Emma leaves and doesn’t respond to Charlie’s calls or texts when he returns home to an empty apartment. At the end, Charlie, covered in blood, looking miserable, goes alone to their favourite diner. It was the one Emma had mentioned wanting to visit after the wedding, dressed up, like how Oscar award winners do.

And then Emma arrives. She sits across from him, and they reintroduce themselves as if meeting for the first time. That ending made me tear up a bit. The idea of starting over. Meeting again. Choosing again. It’s sad but also weirdly hopeful. Especially remembering the scene where Emma says Charlie was her first real crush and love, even at 28, and the beautifully emotional scene where Charlie whispers in her ear and asks her to marry him.

Overall, The Drama was such a good movie. Great story. Visually beautiful. Amazing performances. Everyone, please clap for Zendaya. She looked stunning in every single frame. All eyes are on her. I was barely looking at Robert Pattinson, but whenever I did, he delivered too.

This was one hell of a ride! It makes you question whether love can truly be unconditional and whether you can still fully accept someone with all their flaws and worst actions, or whether certain things should remain secrets forever.