Zendaya and Robert Pattinson left Challengers and Die My Love with an appetite for romantic turbulence. Their upcoming A24 film The Drama dropped its trailer ahead of Valentine’s weekend, and it does not look like a sweet date-night flick. The teaser opens on Zendaya and Pattinson as engaged couple Emma and Charlie, a picture-perfect duo spending their life in sun-drenched bookstores. Things take a turn when they’re dining with their married friends, played by Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie, who suggest that they all go around and tell the story of the worst thing they’ve ever done. Everyone’s laughing at the confessions until Emma speaks. We don’t get to hear exactly what Emma did, but Haim does scream “Emma, what the FU—.”
From there, the vibe changes. Emma slaps Charlie too hard while they’re having sex, accuses him of thinking about “it” (likely, the secret) too much, and brandishes a kitchen knife in his face. Charlie, meanwhile, just turns into a walking mess. “Act like you know each other,” a wedding photographer played by Zoë Winters from Materialists tells them. The couple is on the fritz because of Emma’s evil deed. Whatever she did was bad bad.
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The Drama was written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli. He’s best known for his Nicolas Cage–starring fantasy thriller Dream Scenario, but this trailer evokes his smaller hit, Sick of Myself, a dark comedy about a narcissistic woman and her equally toxic artist boyfriend. Ari Aster (Hereditary, Eddington) also produced — not exactly the kind of team that inspires “happy thoughts.” Meet this effed-up couple on April 3, when The Drama opens in theaters.
