If you haven’t yet been spoiled for The Drama, the new Robert Pattinson and Zendaya movie, you’re going to want to watch the movie ASAP. Because now that The Drama is streaming on HBO Max, we have a feeling spoilers are about to be all over the internet.

Written and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself, Dream Scenario) The Drama stars Zendaya as Emma Harwood, who is engaged to be married to Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson). From what we see, Charlie and Emma love each other very much and have a great relationship. But in the days before Emma and Charlie’s wedding, some uncomfortable, unsettling, and downright shocking truths come out, leading this couple to wonder how well they really know each other—and whether they really want to spend the rest of their lives together.

The movie raises interesting questions about morality, judgement, and forgiveness, and it’s the kind of film that’s sure to spark a debate among your friends. There are many different ways to interpret the film, but if you’re looking for a way to process your thoughts, then read on for Decider’s analysis of The Drama movie plot summary, The Drama movie ending explained, and The Drama movie meaning.

Warning: This article contains major The Drama spoilers. Don’t read it until after you watch the film!

The Drama movie plot summary:

Charlie (Robert Pattinson) spots a pretty girl (Zendaya) at a cafe in Boston, and decides to shoot his shot with her by pretending to know the book she is reading: The Damage by Harper Ellison. (This is not a real book. Trust me, I tried to find it!) When the girl completely ignores him while he speaks, he gives up in shame. On his way out, he approaches her to apologize, and this time, she notices him. She explains she is deaf in one ear, and hadn’t heard him, to his relief. She introduces herself as Emma, and asks Charlie if he wants to start over. He agrees, and sits down, and tries again.

We cut to a few years later, when Charlie is working on his wedding vows to Emma, recalling how they first met and she granted him a “second first impression”—and how she then forgave him when he confessed on their first date that he had not, in fact, read The Damage by Harper Ellison. From his vows, and from the quick flashbacks we see that build out their relationship, it seems like Charlie and Emma have a loving, fun-filled, and sexually healthy relationship.

Charlie and Emma attend a food-and-wine tasting dinner with Charlie’s best man, Mike (Mamoudou Athie), and Emma’s maid of honor, Rachel (Alana Haim). Charlie and Emma tell their friends they saw their wedding DJ smoking heroin on a street corner. Charlie wants to fire the DJ, but Emma hesitates to deem the DJ as a “bad person” just for this one instance.

“For all we know, we could have caught her on her worst day,” Emma insists. “Why are acting like you’ve never done anything bad?”

This leads to a conversation in which each person shares the worst thing they’ve ever done in their life. Mike recalls a story in which he used his girlfriend at the time as a “human shield” when they were being attacked by a stray dog. Rachel tells a story about how, as a teenager, she locked her mentally disabled neighbor in an RV closet in the middle of the woods, and didn’t tell anyone, leaving him there over night until he was finally found the next day via a search party. Charlie tells a story about cyberbullying a kid when he was fourteen, to the point where the kid and his family moved towns. All of these stories are laughed off.

And then it’s Emma’s turn. She tells her friends that when she was 15, she “almost did a school shooting.” She explains that she had a plan, and brought her dad’s rifle to school. She confesses she lost her hearing in one ear when she was practicing with the rifle in the woods, even though she told Charlie she’d been deaf in the ear since birth.

Charlie and Mike are shocked, but Rachel, in particular, is incensed. She angrily informs Emma that her cousin was paralyzed in a school shooting and is now in a wheelchair. Emma tries to apologize, but ends up throwing up at the table. Rachel storms off with Mike.

The next day, Charlie meets up with Mike, who encourages Charlie to break off the wedding and the relationship right away. “She’s obviously not the person you thought she was,” Mike tells Charlie. “You’re not marrying a psychopath.” He offers to call the police, or beat her up. Nice guy!

Charlie returns to the apartment to have a serious conversation with Emma. Emma begs Charlie to just forget about it, but he insists on hearing an explanation. But Emma’s explanation isn’t satisfying to Charlie. He wants there to be some trauma, some PTSD, as an acceptable “reason” for why she would plan a school shooting. Emma’s stories about being bullied for not wearing deodorant don’t feel like a justifiable motivation to Charlie. He wants there to be a satisfying narrative in her past that “proves” Emma is a good person, despite this lapse in judgment.

Charlie doesn’t want to hear what Emma is saying: That yes, she was unhappy, and felt isolated, but she was also just drawn to the aesthetic of holding a gun, of being a school shooter. She just thought it looked cool. It felt like playing a character, and it got her attention online, in online communities focused on gun violence. Charlie especially doesn’t like the reason that Emma, ultimately, chose not to do the shooting. It wasn’t because she had a come-to-Jesus moment in which she realized it was morally wrong. It was because someone else did a shooting in her town’s mall.

After the mall shooting, the kids at Emma’s school started an anti-gun advocacy group. Emma became very involved in anti-gun advocacy, where she finds the attention, validation, and connection she craves. She promises Charlie that from that day forward she gave up all thoughts of gun violence and never felt the urge to do anything like that again.

Charlie still loves Emma and tells himself he wants to marry her, but it’s clear he is having doubts. He can’t stop obsessively picturing the shooting, and seeing Emma in other violent situations. He still tries to rationalize the story in his mind. He latches onto the fact Emma’s 12-year-old neighbor died in a car accident in Emma’s childhood. He speculates that this traumatic incident could have led to Emma’s school shooting plan, but Emma dismisses this—she barely knew the neighbor, and didn’t witness anything traumatic.

Rachel, the maid of honor, ends her friendship with Emma and says she will not attend the wedding. Charlie tries to defend Emma to both Rachel and Mike, pointing out that Rachel is a hypocrite, given her story about locking a kid in a closet in the woods. He tries to convince them there must be thousands of normal people who have thoughts about doing stuff like this. When that doesn’t seem to convince them, he tries telling them that Emma was traumatized as a child when she “witnessed her best friend” dying in a car crash.

This lie—that Emma is carrying the trauma of witnessing her best friend die in a car crash—seems to soften both Rachel and Mike on Emma. But Rachel is still upset and righteously angry at Emma.

Charlie is coming apart at the seems, rewriting his vows to say things like “true love is radical acceptance,” and “Emma, I know worse people than you.” He asks a coworker, Misha (Hailey Benton Gates) how she would react if she found out her boyfriend planned a school shooting, and breaks down in tears when Misha tells him she would call the police. When Misha comforts him, Charlie aggressively kisses her and almost has sex with her in his office before stopping.

Hours before the wedding, Emma insists on confronting the DJ about smoking heroin on the street. This time, the roles are reversed—Charlie, fresh of his guilt from cheating, wants to let it slide. Emma, perhaps feeling worn out by the judgment of her friends after having confessed her biggest secret, is incensed that the DJ refuses to admit to the deed. Emma fires the DJ.

On the night of the wedding reception, Emma is hyper aware of Rachel’s judgment, and sees Rachel speaking to Misha. Anxious that the story about the school shooting is spreading around to all the wedding guests, Emma confronts Misha. Assuming she is confronting her about the cheating, Misha reveals to Emma that Charlie kissed her, but that they stopped and “it meant nothing.”

The Drama movie ending explained:

Charlie delivers his speech to Emma in front of all the wedding guests. After a very half-hearted and awkward version of the speech that he planned, Charlie tells Emma he doesn’t deserve her, and yells at the wedding guests for gossiping.

“She didn’t do anything, OK? She didn’t anything. Emma, you’re the love of my life. I can’t understand why I would have done anything to hurt you, especially not with fucking Misha,” Charlie implores—again, in front of everyone. Emma is clearly mortified, but Charlie keeps going, “I don’t even care. I wouldn’t even care if you had killed someone. It wouldn’t change anything about the way I feel about you. I love you more than anything in the world.”

At this point, Charlie yells at Misha and her boyfriend to shut up, and the boyfriend storms over and beats Charlie up, turning the wedding into a total sh– show. A bloodied Charlie goes to the late-night diner where Emma had once suggested they get a post-wedding meal. Emma, still in her wedding dress, finds him there.

Charlie apologizes to Emma, crying. Emma offers Charlie a chance to “start over,” just as she did at the beginning of their movie and the beginning of the relationship. A relieved Charlie takes her up on the offer.

The movie ends, with the understanding that both Charlie and Emma are ready to forgive each other and move on, together.

The Drama movie meaning:

The Drama is a movie about morality, judgment, actions, thoughts, and the concept of “good” people. One way to look at the movie is via the lens of thoughts vs. actions. Despite the shocking revelation that Zendaya’s character planned a school shooting, she didn’t actually do it. In fact, she is the only person in the movie who hasn’t done anything wrong—she’s only thought about it. Whereas Alana Haim really did lock that kid in the closets, and Charlie really did cheat on Emma and embarrass her on her wedding day. Neither of those things cause the same level as harm as a mass shooting, of course—but again, Emma didn’t actually do that.

On a deeper level, I think The Drama makes a very interesting point about the complexity of morality—the way that people don’t fit into categories of “good” and “bad” in the way that we want them to. They don’t follow the same narratives that stories about good vs. evil do. This is clear in the scenes where Charlie wants to justify Emma’s actions with an explanation of some kind of trauma in her past. If there was a justifiable reason for the “bad” action of planning a school shooting, it would mean Emma is still a “good” person.

But there isn’t a good, satisfying justification for what Emma planned to do. She was just a lonely kid who found validation online. It’s not deeper than that. She thought she looked cool in camo while holding a gun. And crucially, she really might have done it—if not for the coincidental mall shooting that changed the course of her life forever.

What if that mall shooting hadn’t happened? What if Emma had gone through her plan? Would she still be the same person that Emma grows up to be—someone who forgives others and is worthy of forgiveness, too?

The Drama also offers an interesting commentary on people’s instinct to judge others. Even Emma, who originally defends the DJ, falls into this trap, when she righteously confronts the DJ about “lying.” (Now that Emma has confessed her secret, it seems, she believes she is in the moral right, and others should do the same.) Alana Haim’s character, Rachel, feels villainous in her judgment of Emma. Rachel takes pleasure in her righteous anger, which she feels is justified by her paralyzed cousin.

It would be easy, as a viewer, to judge Rachel as a “bad” person, in the same way that Rachel judges Emma as a “bad” person. But I don’t think that’s the point that The Drama is trying to make. I think writer/director Kristoffer Borgli is trying to say that people are way more complicated than traditional narratives would have you believe. The idea of morality itself, is far more complicated. Are all school shooters evil? Are they all traumatized? Or is it maybe sometimes just the random whim of a teenager?

Is it possible, maybe, that “good” and “bad” people don’t exist? That there won’t always be a satisfying, storybook reason for people’s actions?

The Drama doesn’t have answers, necessarily. But it does raise the questions. But hey, that’s just my interpretation of the movie. If you have a different take, let me know in the comments.