The only other Kristoffer Borgli movie I’ve seen is 2022’s Sick of Myself, a tar-black comedy in which a 20-something narcissist pathologically lies for attention until she lands on Munchausen syndrome as the best way to keep eyeballs on her, physical degradation be damned. It was a hilariously mean-spirited and physically gnarly satirization of Instagram-era self-absorption. Borgli didn’t really have that grand of critiques he needed to get off his chest, though; he mostly just seemed to be having twisted fun doing what seemed, dramatically speaking, akin to placing one’s thumb on a bruise and pressing progressively harder, pretending not to hear the person on the receiving end’s pained commands to stop.

That narrative style — of aggravating discomfort more than proposing that new of ideas — lives on in The Drama. The tonally similar but all around softer movie is about an artsy soon-to-be-married couple, Emma and Charlie (Zendaya and Robert Pattinson), whose blissfully happy two years together are maybe irreparably damaged when Emma, a little wine-drunk, discloses a freaky secret over dinner about her teenage self. Taking a page from the promotion of Psycho (1960), which found director Alfred Hitchcock imploring audience members not to blab afterward about the watery plot twist that happens about a half hour into the movie, The Drama’s marketing has positioned Emma’s confession as a secret that must be kept. I’d think that was more reasonable if it didn’t arrive so soon into the film. It doesn’t rewrite everything we’ve just seen in the way plot twists typically do; it’s simply what the movie is about.

Read the full review at 425.

Image courtesy of A24.