What is the worst thing you’ve ever done? Lock a child in an abandoned house (and then possibly lie that you didn’t kill him)? Use your now-ex-girlfriend as a human shield from a violent dog? Cyber bully a young kid to the point that their entire family moves? Or, did you perhaps plan to carry out a shooting at your school but chose not to because someone beat you to it? 

The Drama, directed by Kristoffer Borgli, a Norwegian writer and director, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, exposes ugly truths. Following the couple Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) through the days leading up to their wedding, we are presented with questions of morality, humanity and whether or not love conquers all. 

In a recent interview, Zendaya said this is a movie with layers; each time you watch it shows you something different, and possibly gets you crying (or laughing) more and more each time. 

Before I analyze our four possible villains, let’s set the scene: during a food tasting for their wedding, accompanied by their maid of honor, Rachel (Alana Haim) and best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie), Rachel pushes everyone to admit the most horrible thing they’ve ever done. 

Mike’s Confession: a violent dog started attacking him and his then-girlfriend, attempting to bite and lash out at them. Mike promptly placed his girlfriend in between himself and the afflicted dog; he is now married to Rachel, not said girlfriend. Mike presents as a weak and timid man whose confession seems to be his usual response whenever in moments of conflict. Later on, at Emma and Charlie’s wedding, he hides behind Rachel. Mike is my least favorite villain. He’s just sad. 

Rachel’s Confession: as a young child, Rachel was neighbors with someone she hints may have been “slow” and the two go out to see an abandoned RV. After daring him to walk into one of the RV’s dark closets, Rachel locks the kid in. In response to him going crazy, yelling and banging on the door to be let out, she ran back home, claiming to be “freaked” out. When the other child’s family sends a search party out, she tells the father she doesn’t know anything. At first Rachel actually says “I don’t know” in response to what happened to the child, but following horrified gasps from her friends, she quickly adds that the kid was found and alive, and we forget immediately that she first had a noncommittal answer. I personally think she was lying. 

The most viable option for the villain is Rachel: throughout the entirety of her retelling, she’s laughing over herself. There is no remorse behind her words even though she undeniably actually hurts someone, and doesn’t give any judgement to Mike or Charlie’s actions. When it comes to Emma’s confession however, (which, spoiler, she doesn’t actually do anything) she is quick to punish her for the thoughts of an adolescent. 

It’s important to note that Rachel is the instigator in the initial scene of confessions. Mike clearly does not want to share his story but she goads him, saying she can tell it instead. When both Charlie and Emma also hesitate, she pushes their evil acts out into the open. 

Charlie’s Confession: as a teenager Charlie took to the internet and, for no reasons established, cyber bullied another child he did not actually know. In response to being asked “how bad?” by his friends, Charlie laughs with a nervous twitch that it drove the child’s entire family to move out of his home town. An extremely important detail to me is when Mike pushes Charlie for more he adds he made the kid cry but Mike sighs in disappointment, saying “you were 14! Who cares! Your brain doesn’t even fully develop until you’re 25!”   

We don’t get much context for Charlie’s worst act. When he realizes he has to come up with an answer we get half of a story which seems like an improvised tale, almost so that he has something interesting to add: which I believe is a lie. When we see flashbacks of Charlie and Emma’s coffee shop meet cute, he comes up with a lie to strike up a conversation with her. This is inevitably the conversation which fast tracks the relationship, and when he finally admits to Emma he had initially lied, her reaction is cautious disappointment and his is aloof uncaring. 

Emma’s Confession: as a teenager Emma was isolated, bullied and left alone a lot by her parents, a perfect and common concoction for depression. However, instead of just crying herself to sleep, Emma planned to take action by committing a school shooting at her own high school. We see flashbacks as Emma tells her friends (who, notably, are sitting in immediate silence) and fiance (who, notably, is laughing at first) of her young self learning to use her fathers rifle and becoming deaf in one ear while attempting to practice using it in the woods behind her house. After a stranger shoots up the local mall, Emma is seemingly brought back to reality; crying in the arms of her classmates during a school therapy exercise and becoming involved in advocacy for anti-gun violence. Emma does not actually follow through with her worst act, she dances with it right up until she backs out, but for her fiance and friends, that doesn’t count for much. 

The reaction to Emma’s “almost” worst act is deafeningly different from the others’ confessions. While Rachel and Mike sit in silence, Charlie continues to intermittently laugh, waiting for Emma to drop the ball and confess the lie. Rachel is furious and references her cousin who is in a wheelchair due to a shooting, to which Emma stumbles through an apology and says she was only 15. 

Rachel’s response, “Oh you were 15? So what, does that make it okay?” 

There are a thousand other moments to analyze, but in the end, The Drama left me realizing that the honest confession of Emma’s worst act does not make her our villain, rather the real villain was the attempt to obscure other full truths. Charlie’s confession is evasive and easy to forget, an intentional immorality to never let anyone realize who he could really be. We see a habit of lies spinning Emma into a false sense of comfort where she feels like she can reveal this worst act to him. Instead, we see Charlie descend into a chaos of bad decisions as he allows himself to make mistakes in order to justify his continued love for Emma. And while Rachel may be the easiest villain to target, being a remorseless anti-mirror to Emma’s obvious reflection and ownership, Charlie is my final villain as he weaponizes the narrative of the story.