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A24’s new film, “The Drama,” is being criticized by some gun safety advocates who say the studio should have done more to warn audiences about the dark plot at the center of the film.
The film, which opens in North American theaters on Friday, follows newlyweds Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson), who struggle with how to proceed with their upcoming nuptials after the bride admits to the “worst thing” she’s ever done: planning a school shooting as a teenager.
Although he didn’t face it – and the film doesn’t show actual gun violence – some scenes include flashbacks of a young Emma who seems obsessed with her father’s gun and who appears to be filming the gunman’s confessional video while planning the massacre.
“With such a sensitive topic, especially in the US, that conversation cannot begin and end on a screen,” March for Our Lives, a youth-driven organization first founded by students who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday. “It should continue the way the film is presented.”
A24 did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment.
Most moviegoers haven’t seen “The Drama,” but people started reacting online after the plot was revealed in a March TMZ article. The book spoke to Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was killed in the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Mauser, who had not seen the film at the time of the interview, said he believes the plot “makes people” the shooters and “normalizes school shootings.”
Some criticism has also focused on the film’s advertising which has been described as misleading.
In the months leading up to its release, A24 went all-in on wedding-themed advertising. The studio ran an ad in The Boston Globe in December that looked like a fake announcement. It opened a one-day wedding week in Las Vegas, where couples were promised a “spontaneous,” “beautiful” and “slightly risqué affair.”
March’s premiere in Los Angeles featured a party complete with a Champagne tower, an elaborate cake, red balloons and roses, and themed cocktails.
“The manner in which this film has been promoted is at odds with the reality involved,” March for Our Lives wrote in its post. “We expect the best from A24 and the artists behind it.”
Mia Tretta, a survivor of gun violence, also condemned the film’s premise in a statement provided to NBC News by the nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety.
“Hollywood treats school shootings as ‘sad twists’ to boost ticket sales, but to me, this is not a conspiracy,” said Tretta, who is also an adviser to the group Students Demand Action.
59 percent of US adults, or someone they care about, have experienced gun violence in their lifetime, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. “More than 4,300 children and youth (0-19) are shot dead every year and more than 17,000 are shot and injured,” said the organization.
“It’s a reality I lived in when I was shot at school when I was 15 years old, and I was still a student who was scared at Brown last December,” said Tretta. “Using a staged massacre as a rom-com hook is not a ‘conversation starter,’ it’s exploiting a crisis. There are ways to express outrage without using trauma as a tactic. Studios and stars have huge platforms and should use them to give the survivors a level, not the perpetrators.”
Pop culture depictions of school shootings are often controversial, with many viewers debating the line between storytelling and sentimentality. Other projects, such as 2011’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” have drawn positive reviews for tackling the subject head-on. Some have struggled to get off the ground – the reboot of “Heathers,” for example, has been repeatedly postponed amid a flurry of shootings in 2018.
The “Drama” has so far generated positive reactions: As of Friday, it scored 81% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, which includes reviews from critics.
Online, some Redditors voiced the concerns of gun safety advocates when debating whether they wanted to see the movie after learning more about the plot.
“I’m glad the twist is leaking so people have a chance to avoid it,” wrote one Reddit user. “I don’t think the trauma survivors of a mass shooting deserve to save the movie. I get that A24 wants to make money but they shouldn’t have to pay for people who have experienced something traumatic.”
Others have defended the film. “Art is art – it’s meant to be controversial,” one user wrote. “And these events are already normal, aren’t they? So that’s the problem?”
Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli appeared to be expecting a divisive reaction, telling the audience at the LA premiere that it was “a challenge to put on a genre film.”
“You decide what is for you,” he said before the film was shown. “You can laugh. You can cry. You can leave the theater if you want.”
In an interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Zendaya also said that the film is difficult to describe.
“What is difficult to even talk about the film is that there are many types of films. It is a romantic comedy in many ways, but it is also a drama … Everyone has their own type of emotions that leave the theater, especially with a big twist,” he said. “There are a lot of conversations that happen after watching it. … I really hope that people don’t spoil it, so they’re allowed to go into it without knowing it and really feel the drama.”
March for Our Lives said it hopes the film will spark a conversation.
“But,” the organization wrote in its Instagram post, “when something like a school shooting is taken for granted or made fun of, it raises a deeper question: what kind of conversation is it meant to start?”
