Critic Reviews

A nuptial apocalypse has rarely been explored with such dark intelligence and mordant wit as in this often piercing and cringe-out-loud dramedy starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya.

It’s Zendaya’s movie. Her layered performance holds back then lets go as Emma’s full complexity is gradually revealed. If you can’t get onboard with Emma, then you’re the problem — which partly is Borgli’s intention.

It’s an exceedingly black comedy threaded through with intense drama that completely deconstructs the rom-com, casting it as both a shiny and sinister thing… and one frequently inducing vomiting.

As it tells a thrilling story, engineered with expert precision to keep you hanging on every turn, it embarks on a truly fascinating thought experiment about the nature of identity in relationships: who we are to other people, how easily that can change, and how disruptive it can be when it does. This film is rooted (to steal one of its laugh lines) in "double empathy," exploring when and why we condemn others without itself condemning any of its characters. It may be an entertaining conversation piece, but make no mistake, The Drama is also one of the best movies you'll see this year.

Led by immaculate performances, it’s one of the most delightfully nerve-wracking rabbit holes you’re likely to tumble down this year.

A dark and darkly funny dissection of a couple’s ‘perfect’ relationship, examining how internal forces and exterior pressures can drive two people to their breaking point.

The Drama is a cinematic Trojan horse: it's a breezy farce that feels uncomfortably ominous, and it's also a star-studded romance movie which could set off a discourse bomb.

It offers us a provocation, a jeu d’ésprit of outrage, a psychological meltdown that is more astutely articulated than in many other more solemnly intended films. And it gives us what it promises in the title.

The Drama is a film that will stick in your mind long after you’ve left the theater.

It’s conflicted, messy, ambiguous, and imperfect, but it’s treated with enough of a delicate, scrupulous hand to test the moral waters and not degrade itself in the process.