Highlights
Maybe it’s just me. But it feels like Hollywood today often treats love as something scary. While Hollywood romances used to focus on the fear of being alone (When Harry Met Sally) and horror films on the fear of strangers (Friday the 13th, Halloween), more films are treating relationships themselves as sources of horror. Whether that’s your partner secretly controlling and abusing you (Companion, Don’t Worry Darling, Don’t Blink Twice), or losing your identity (Together). Meanwhile, even modern rom coms like Materialists portray sexual assault as a normal part of dating and a happy marriage as a dice roll.
Romance as Horror?
A24’s The Drama, a dark romantic comedy out this month, is the latest film to lean into the “horror film romance” vibe shift. But what makes this movie different is that it ends with hope. The film follows "Charlie" (Robert Pattinson) and "Emma" (Zendaya) as a happily engaged couple whose relationship is put to the test when an unexpected revelation about Emma’s past sends their wedding week off the rails. The twist—and the film’s tone—borrow heavily from the horror genre. But what’s great about The Drama is how it speaks to modern romance fears, while also encouraging a hopeful way forward.
Warning: Spoilers to follow.
The big twist in the film is that Emma was once an “almost” school shooter. She planned it, bought the guns, and everything. But then decided not to because someone else got there first. And the community she built in gun violence activism in the wake of this shooting gave her the acceptance she was looking for.
This revelation causes her fiancé, Charlie, to have a full-on spiral. He imagines her as a serial killer, both in dreams and in his waking hours. He looks back on every interaction they’ve had, every act of aggression, as a sign of her “true nature.” These moments are played like a horror film, in music, editing, and unsettling imagery. (One moment has Charlie imagining Emma in her underwear, holding a gun while staring at him seductively like a model in a gun magazine.) When Charlie—trying to convince himself as much as anyone—suggests to a coworker that it would be okay to marry a former almost-mass shooter if they convinced you they had changed, she responds that convincing you is exactly what a psychopath would do.
But this is not the only way the film plays itself as horror. It also plays up the courtship period and ordinary interactions with distinctly scary film language. When Charlie first goes up to Emma to ask her out, both his fear of being rejected and coming off as a creep are palpable. His best friend even remarks as such as they debate whether his approach or a different approach would have been creepier. Throughout the film, they filmmakers lean into awkward conversations and pauses to make you feel discomfort and fear. They also constantly cut between events that are really happening and the fears in people’s minds, creating “jump scares” that keep the audience off balance.
Today's Fear-Based Dating Scene
All of this reflects the fear-based environment in which modern American dating currently exists. Unmarried men are increasingly fearful of asking women out for fear of rejection or being seen as creepy. Unmarried women are increasingly fearful of sexual assault and being oppressed by their husbands. This is particularly true as men and women grow further apart politically and fear each other’s politics. Both men and women are increasingly warning each other—particularly online—about how bad the opposite sex is and that seemingly normal behaviors could actually be signs of toxic behavior. As Gen Z culture critic and author Freya India describes the online scene:
He compliments you a lot? Love-bombing. Says I miss you too soon? Run. Approaches you in person? Predator. It’s all so cynical. It’s all about how not to catch feelings; ways not to get attached; how “you’re not gonna get hurt if you have another man waiting”! We blunt romance and passion with this constant calculation of risk, this paranoid scanning for threats, and by holding back to avoid being hurt...
Some of this caution is rational. There are things to fear in relationships. Divorce, sexual assault, cheating, and abuse are real. And a person’s past is not irrelevant to assessing these risks. For example, people who’ve cheated on their romantic partner in the past are much more likely to do so in the future. More grimly, if you’ve been cheated on in the past, you’re more likely to be in the future.
This dovetails with the, admittedly often annoying, “body count” dating discourse online. Both men and women find members of the opposite sex who’ve slept with too many people less romantically desirable. This is a good thing. Higher body counts—for both sexes—are associated with a higher risk of cheating and divorce.
But the fear of dating and marriage extends beyond the rational. First—as IFS regularly points out—most research shows that, on average, married people are way happier than single people, particularly those with children (especially women). Divorce rates have steadily been going down. And there are incredibly simple ways to raise your odds of being happier and staying together: going to church regularly, not living together before you’re married, and going to college, etc. People way overestimate how extreme the average political views are of those they consider on the “other side.” Religious conservative men tend to be the least abusive men. (Which is good news for American women, because religiosity in American men is growing.)
The Drama both acknowledges our fear of modern marriage while refusing to let that fear keep the characters from choosing love.
Part of why young people don’t know this is because they have so little real-world dating experience. According to an IFS/Wheatley survey, three-quarters of women (74%) and nearly two-thirds of men (64%) have not dated or have dated only a few times in the last year. And lack of confidence is a major factor. As Jonathan Haidt has pointed out, young people have also been trained to see themselves as fragile by safety-obsessed parenting and schooling—resulting in a “What doesn’t kill me leaves me irreparably traumatized” mentality. So it makes sense that young people have less confidence about being able to handle relationship-based hurt.
When you exaggerate both the dangers of relationships and your own fragility, it’s no wonder fewer young people want to take the risk. It’s tragic because it’s false. Yet it’s not exactly clear how one reverses this narrative spiral since it's mutually enforcing.
A Flawed but Hopeful Message
The Drama gives at least a partial answer. At the end of the film, both Charlie and Emma decide that their love for each other is great enough that they’re willing to commit to it despite knowing each other’s flaws. Love and commitment to repeated forgiveness—The Drama argues—are key to moving past fear. And the film is at least partially correct, here.
Where the film is weakest is in developing these ideas so that audiences can tell the difference between positive and negative relationship encouragement. What is the difference between ignoring red flags (almost mass shooter) and accepting someone's flaws? What does a “we before me” commitment look like beyond simply continually forgiving each other? The film brings up many of these topics, but it doesn’t interrogate them deeply enough to force the audience wrestle with them beyond the surface, or give them the resources to do so beyond the biases (and toxic internet advice) they’re already bringing to the table.
The Drama both acknowledges our fear of modern marriage while refusing to let that fear keep the characters from choosing love. If it delved deeper into giving people a practical map for love, it could be even better. But hopefully, this encouragement will be loud enough to drown out the influencers in our culture who want to make fear of love and marriage the loudest voice of all.
Joseph Holmes is an NYC-based film and culture critic. He's written for outlets such as Forbes, The New York Times, Christianity Today, World Magazine, Religion Unplugged, Relevant, and Religion & Liberty. He co-hosts a weekly podcast called The Overthinkers.
*Photo credit: Courtesy of A24.
