What was Rachel’s problem??

One of my favorite movies this year is The Drama starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. The movie is about a couple getting married, and when one of them makes a confession that causes their lives to fall apart. I recently rewatched it and noticed how much messier a side character’s confession was, so let’s talk about it. This blog will have some spoilers for The Drama; this is your only heads-up.

(Movie still from The Drama)

Emma and Charlie are doing a food tasting for their wedding with their friends Rachel and Mike. They’re obviously drunk when Rachel proposes they play a truth game; everyone must say the worst thing they’ve done. Mike used his ex-girlfriend as a shield to protect himself from a dog, Rachel locked a kid with an intellectual disability in a closet of an RV in the middle of the woods, Charlie cyberbullied someone until they moved away, and Emma planned a mass shooting when she was 15. These are all bad, but the one that stands out is definitely Emma’s confession. As soon as Emma says her worst thing, Rachel starts going at her, attacking her, asking her questions, but not letting her get a word in. While she’s attacking Emma, I couldn’t help but notice the hypocrisy coming out of Rachel.

While both of their actions were bad, only one harms someone else. Everyone can agree that planning a mass shooting is a horrible thing, but she came to her senses and didn’t go through with it. In the end, Emma’s actions only really harmed herself since it’s definitely not healthy to think about doing a horrible thing. On the other hand, with Rachel, she actively harmed someone else’s well-being. She locked a kid in a closet in the middle of nowhere. When his dad asked her if she had seen him, she lied and told him no; the kid was in there for a day before he was found, and she never spoke up. One of the guys asked her if the kid wasn’t found, would she have spoken up; she says, yes, of course. Then they point out that she didn’t the first time, and she makes a comment that she didn’t want to get in trouble. The way Rachel handled this situation really shows that she only really cares about herself.

When Rachel is going after Emma, she brings up her cousin who was hurt during a shooting. But throughout the movie, you get a feeling that Rachel and her cousin aren’t that close. In fact, when she is asked about their bond, she simply says that they are family, which lacks any deep connection. Being family is a bond, but you’re not close just because you’re family. Rachel bringing up her cousin also shows how big of a hypocrite she is. She doesn’t seem to care much about the disabled kid she locked in an abandoned RV, but she uses her cousin’s disability as a moral shield to make herself look like the better person.

Throughout the film, you get a sense that Rachel never really liked Emma. Right away in the beginning of the movie, Rachel tells Emma that she’s ugly when she cries, which I think is an awful thing to say to a friend. I think it’s also important to note that Rachel went to the wedding to make Emma’s day worse. At this point in the movie, Emma and Rachel are not on speaking terms. Any good person would have just not shown up at the wedding. 

I also like to point out that, between Emma and Rachel, Emma is the only one who seemed to show any growth between her teen self and her adult self. Rachel’s thing also happened when she was a kid, but now that she is an adult, she is still passing her actions off as a joke. Once Emma realized how bad her thinking was, she decided to take action against it. She turned to activism and actively spoke against guns.

To wrap up, after watching the movie 2 times, I believe Rachel was the real “villain” of the movie. I also think that one of the main themes of the movie is action vs. intention. Rachel had horrible actions, but Emma had horrible intentions.

I also like to say that I do think Emma’s thinking is a horrible, awful thing. This blog is about Rachel, but that is not me excusing Emma’s thoughts. 

If you haven’t watched The Drama, you definitely should. It’s a movie that’ll leave you in deep thought.