Was keeping The Drama’s premise secret worth the damage? A Critical Review
- margosloan215
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
When fiction and films use real-world traumatic events as plot devices, at what point does the importance of trigger warnings outweigh the taboo of spoilers?
The recent A24 release, The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, was widely touted as a “dark romantic comedy.” Loglines used unexpected turns or unsettling truths to distance curious would-be moviegoers from guessing what happens between the central couple. Yet films and genre expectations are predictable enough; early teasers in the form of mock wedding invitations suggested pre-nuptial hijinks were the true villain of the story, and short trailers focused on funny moments to sell some chemistry. The film’s stars strategically kept details close to the vest. For Zendaya’s part, her press tour touted the classic symbols of something blue, borrowed, old, and new to further push the wedding premise.
Frankly, it had all the trappings of a safe film to see.
I agreed to take a friend to Thursday night’s showing and didn’t bother looking up any potential spoilers or warnings on sites like DoesTheDogDie.com. We bought advanced tickets to secure good seats and watched Connor Storrie’s Verizon Wireless feature on YouTube before previews began. The small venue was attended well, with no empty seats as the lights dimmed.
The earliest scenes wield some tools exceptionally well; through intelligent audio formatting, we learn our bride has hearing loss. The groom’s awkwardness at their first meeting sets him up as instantly sympathetic. His first attempt at introducing himself fails, and she sympathetically tells him to try again, as if it hadn’t really happened. Time switches from past to present as they plan their wedding speeches, and intimate scenes are spliced in like jump-scares. Their mismatched personalities somewhat dampen the heat the audience is supposed to presume exists when no one else is watching.
As the main couple debates firing their wedding DJ, their friends instigate a game of, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” A lazy trope, perhaps, as an inciting incident, but it’s effective enough in the moment. The scene creates instant worry with the mention of a dog that almost invites the audience to fill in its fate before the reveal. It’s played for laughs when someone admits to locking a presumably-disabled child in a closet. Robert Pattinson’s character Charlie—a somewhat boring character in general—claims his worst act was cyberbullying as a teen.
Yet Zendaya’s Emma ultimately wins the round with a confession that finally answers for the vague unexpected turns and unsettling truths we were promised. While she appears regretful through her confession, Emma tells her friends that, as a teen, she planned and nearly carried out a school shooting.
Writers at large consistently debate the validity and necessity behind trigger warnings (TWs), sometimes called content warnings (CWs), in fictional media. In online spaces such as Threads, TikTok, and Instagram, it’s a topic that frequently recycles. Some argue that TWs are overused and effectively spoil the story; confident writers in this camp may take it a step further by openly declaring that their work “is not for people who need trigger warnings”. On the other hand, some claim TWs keep readers safe and honor the modern social contract to acknowledge mental health. From what I’ve observed as an active member of the writing community, there are few people in the grey between.
Yet whether a creator wants to include TWs or not in their work, there are communities dedicated to providing them. The aforementioned site DoesTheDogDie.com was created to protect viewers who were sensitive to films with events that inspired its name. Per their own data, DoesTheDogDie.com now tracks over two hundred triggers for all varieties of media, most commonly movies. To the people who rely on such a site, TWs are not about spoilers. They’re seen as an essential protection for mental health.
Trigger warnings rarely represent content that could easily be ignored by casual consumers; their purpose is to alert those who may have trauma related to specific events. The most common TWs correspond to common occurrences like assault, pregnancy, death, drug use, animal abuse, and self-harm. Creators can choose to be specific about TWs and even include page numbers if the content is written, or they can be vague and protect the overarching plot points of their work if revealing TWs spoils specific events. For proponents of TWs, it isn’t about declining to consume content that may be triggering; it’s about giving the consumer the opportunity to prepare for a trigger and act accordingly. It’s viewed as a form of consent.
Admittedly, there was a time when I would’ve considered TWs to be unnecessary. I might have even risked my writing to argue on behalf of those who wish to eliminate them. But my experience has taught me a humbling, invaluable thing: it’s easy to dismiss trigger warnings until you need one.
As a Millennial from Bailey, Colorado, I grew up a stone’s throw from Columbine High School, an unfortunate landmark of history that I recall as vividly as 9/11. The name of the school became synonymous with school violence, and I grew numb to its proximity. I saw Bowling for Columbine at the movie theater across the street from the school and thought nothing of it.
After all, school shootings are common. Gun violence is scary. But it always felt like a far-away threat until September 27, 2006, when a community vagrant entered Platte Canyon High School with weapons that served no purpose but to kill. After hours of horrific assaults, threats, and immortalized text messages from his victims, he ended the life of a gorgeous young girl and forever changed the lives of all who knew her, including myself.
The Drama doesn’t satisfy its premise with the first mention of Emma’s teenage contemplations; it doubles down on how serious she was by frequently posing her with weapons. Her teenage self films a manifesto that identifies specific students as would-be victims. Charlie has nightmares that their wedding becomes a bloodbath. And when her maid of honor reacts with understandable disgust at Emma’s confession and reveals that her cousin was paralyzed in a shooting event, she’s painted as a villain for not wanting to attend the wedding and shutting Emma out.
Perhaps if the film chose to present the issue as a genuine discussion and not something to potentially be laughed at, it wouldn’t have come across as a betrayal of expectations. Maybe if there hadn’t been 233 school shootings in 2025(1), it wouldn’t have felt like a mockery of such a serious issue. Do filmmakers, screenwriters, and actors have the responsibility to warn an audience about content at all, and if so, why wouldn’t mass gun violence be considered a worthy candidate for disclosure?
I suppose if I’d known the central theme was, “Wedding is disrupted when the bride admits to planning a mass shooting,” I probably wouldn’t have seen the film. But I would argue that if the mere mention of a TW ruins the entire story, one might need to consider if centering an entire film on such a premise is a good idea at all.
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