Nate At The Movies

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

I will be amending this error as soon as I can, but we got to the theater late tonight and missed the first minute or two of this movie. It seemed to be mostly unimportant—there wasn’t anything later in the movie that I felt like I couldn’t explain—but I’ll still use my Regal Unlimited pass to go see the opening minutes. At any rate, I was excited for The Drama, because I enjoyed Kristoffer Borgli’s last movie, Dream Scenario, and I’m a much bigger fan of Zendaya and Robert Pattinson than I am Nicolas Cage.

As expected, The Drama expertly placed the viewer in a constant state of unease, this time with a soon-to-be-wed couple instead of a going-insane middle-aged man. I’m glad the secret was revealed early, because it gave the narrative time to explore the fallout pretty deeply. I did have a bit of trouble getting behind a school shooting being used as a narrative tool—as a teacher, that’s one thing that scares me shitless—but I eventually got past it. Morgan even made an interesting point that exploring the cultural impact of school shootings and the sort of dark fascination that resulted from it was pretty compelling. I did think there were a few times where the whole affair was a bit too romanticized, but on the whole, it was more an effective device than a distracting point of discomfort.

Smartly, the film didn’t hinge every future interaction or consequence on Emma’s specific history with the school shooting. Instead, Emma and Charlie’s relationship was explored just on the idea of, “can learning one thing about a person you thought you knew everything about change your entire relationship?”, not necessarily dependent on it being a school shooting. The early and late comparison to their DJ’s alleged heroin problem was a clever addition, too, showing how easily one can change their perspective when the sleight is smaller and the person is less known. When it comes to the love of your life, though, even a past issue of monumentally greater size has to be deliberated over. Nice touch, Kristoffer.

The way this one detail tore everything apart was sad and so funny. The slow unraveling of the soon-to-be-marriage was tough to watch, but the wedding toasts sequence was uncomfortably hilarious. I can’t believe Charlie didn’t stop talking, but he sure paid for it! The last scene was also a lovely way to end the movie, showing that both of them were willing to try it all again. The Drama was weird and fun and heartfelt and better than Dream Scenario, in my opinion. Maybe that’s just because I like Zendaya and Pattinson, who did some excellent work here. Pattinson in particular was great; this was his movie, and he made The Drama worth the price of admission. Can’t wait to catch it again soon (or at least the first few minutes)!