The Drama (Spoiler Warning)
Everyone Is Missing the Point.
The Drama is a 2026 “romantic comedy drama” starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. While the film is good, it isn't really the self-proclaimed “romantic comedy” it advertised to be. Though our main characters, Charlie and Emma, are in love — the movie has a clear shift in plot after the wine tasting scene that prevails during the rest of the film.
During this scene, the movie shifts from a quirky romance to a dark social commentary on not only gun violence, but also gun culture. Charlie asks Emma what even drew her to the idea of guns and Emma explains that the “aesthetics” of doing a school shooting was intriguing to her. After this, Charlie throughout the movie tries to rationalize and minimize what Emma had done — a direct reflection of American gun culture. People (online) speculate about the psychology of shooters, assuming that they either had a hard personal or school life, without any evidence to believe so. Society must find someone else to blame for a person’s violent, anti-social behavior, rather than admitting that some people are simply born with the chemical imbalance of being violent. Charlie combed through Emma’s childhood and tried to find anything else to blame for Emma’s violent tendencies, and though Emma does tell him about her past, the movie shows the audience that she exaggerated her situation heavily and left a good amount of shit out. The situation of bullying she went through wasn’t crazy mean like she pretends it was and her parents were happily married and treated her well. She even admitted that her neighbor who died from a car accident was a year older, not close with her, and that she did not even see it happen — Charlie is who exaggerated that. Charlie’s character does have his own separate issues, but his character also serves to mimic society’s reaction to gun violence, system-justification theory.
Audiences are completely neglecting Emma’s anti-social, mentally ill behavior and actions. The film shows us that even though yes, she was picked on, it was not harsh bullying in the way she acted like it was. During her wedding scene, her father and mother are both beside each other, showing that they are happily married. It is also in this scene that we see that her parents clearly loved her. All details about her life that she was not transparent about to Charlie when he was asking about her youth, she even left out a key detail to her personality. Audiences defend Emma by claiming that because she did not act on her violence then she is innocent, but this is actually not true. Emma did act on her violent urges; she shot a dog. Now, even though shooting a dog is not a personalized violent crime, it is a textbook sign of complex and intense mental illness. Emma checks off plenty of the characteristic of being mentally ill; she has a need for power, she disregards rules, she lacks accountability, childhood behavior problems, abnormal thinking, she has aggressive tendencies even as an adult, and she has no friends. Emma shows very direct signs of anti-social behavior, qualities that are not normal.
That is where audiences are misinterpreting the film. Believing the movie to be a criticism on Emma’s actions and audiences defending her due to that belief, boosting the second point of the movie. Mental illness, especially in media, is rationalized by society. The wine tasting scene is not meant to be a reveal scene for Emma alone, but for all four of them at the table. Rachel locked a disabled child in a closet for a whole night and lied to the police when they asked her if she knew, Mike used his girlfriend as a human shield against violent dogs on her birthday in a foreign country, Charlie is a compulsive liar to literally everyone (including his girlfriend), and Emma planned a school shooting. Comparing Emma’s secret to the rest that was shared is also rationalization. The things Mike and Rachel confess are not normal things to do, and neither is the compulsive lying on Charlie’s part. Yet, viewers (me included) rationalize the others by comparing what Emma admitted to, further proving a second central point of the movie.
Despite my clear distaste for the misinterpretation of the movie, I do believe that this film is a very nuance way to discuss American gun culture. The reasoning behind the reaction I have towards the misreading of this movie stems from the mere fact that the leading cause of death in kids has been guns. Not only does the movie reflect gun culture, but it also reflects mental health culture and demonstrates society’s reaction to mental illnesses. All of the characters are extremely disfunctional and abnormal, and the movie poses good questions about society, mental health, and human nature across multiple sources of media. If you have read all of this and still have not seen the film, you should watch it yourself and see what you think.
