The first rule of The Drama is: you do not talk about The Drama. This is the approach, at least, taken by the film’s marketing team, who have nurtured a near-total omertà when it comes to its much-vaunted Big Twist. Those who have seen The Drama – a terse and urticating comedy about nuclear-grade wedding jitters – will know this isn’t really a twist at all, but rather the core premise. It is revealed near the beginning, when bride-to-be Emma (Zendaya) drunkenly spills her most shameful secret to fiancé Charlie (Robert Pattinson). As a result, it’s impossible to talk about the film – or about Zendaya’s character – without flouting this particular spoiler. So let’s flout.
The secret Emma divulges is dark. Mariana Trench dark. She explains that when she was 15 years old, she planned to commit a school shooting, going as far as to bring her father’s rifle into her high school before an abrupt change of heart. Charlie and his friends are scandalised. (Audiences too have been scandalised: in the build-up to its release, The Drama faced vocal criticism from anti-gun activists.) The twist, devised by writer-director Kristoffer Borgli, is reasonably effective as a dramatic catalyst, and, perversely, as a comic one. Pattinson’s character, destabilised by the realisation that he may be about to marry a would-be terrorist, spends much of the film neurotically spiralling, with increasingly wild results. At this wedding, the honeymoon period is over before the vows.
