“You always find a way to turn my drama into a comedy.” It’s a sweet, warm admission between a soon-to-be married couple that accentuates the snappy opening moments of Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama, which non-chronologically sifts through their oafishly sweet meet-cute to the week of their dreamy wedding. But it’s also a statement that defines the film’s palpably awkward and deeply divisive genre exercise that sees the quick-cutting cadence of the film’s rom-com fabric swiftly sliced through by a sudden, perturbing emotional quandary—unleashing a cringy, elliptical experience that shocks and awes as much as it elicits bouts of unsettling, uncontrollable laughter.

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson star as Emma and Charlie, a seemingly picture-perfect couple that seems to have it all: a storybook meeting, high-profile careers, and an impossibly innate sexual chemistry. It’s a charming dynamic embodied by a first act that runs the gamut of rom-com tropes, while still drawing us in with its quirky, conversational, yet lived-in rhythm.

When the two spend the night sampling wedding wines with friends, Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), they play a parlour game that involves divulging the “worst thing they’ve ever done.” Armed with liquid courage, Emma reveals that she planned a mass killing as a teenager but ultimately pulled out at the last minute.

In a moment of pure provocation that pulls the rug from under Charlie and audiences alike, Borgli’s film abruptly transitions from light romance to, as its title suggests, a potent, prodding drama that becomes both tough to watch and hard to look away from. As Charlie struggles to reconcile the love of his life with a would-be psychopath, and Emma flails to convince him otherwise, Borgli embroils us in a maelstrom of difficult questions and even fuzzier answers, as he renders wedding planning milestones like speech-drafting, DJ booking, and photoshoots austere voids of doubt, dissonance, and wincing humiliation.

From here, The Drama enters an elliptical stream, mirroring its protagonists’ fractured mental states and their difficult emotional conundrums with spontaneous cutaways between Emma’s disturbing bayou-set past, visceral nightmares, pure fantasy, and the solemn present. As it abounds in surreal, darkly comic imagery—full of gun-toting children and blood-gushing ears—Borgli’s film knows when to ebb its flow, bask in sobering silence, and writhe in its emotional flux.

Pattinson and Zendaya tap into a seamless chemistry that electrifies the film’s precarious tonal tightrope, with their nervy, expressive energy remaining deeply felt and relatable, emotionally grounding a film designed to provoke and push audiences with a relentless volley of zany circumstances. It all coalesces in a painfully awkward, nail-bitingly cringe finale that offers as much catharsis as it does little clarity.

While parts of The Drama can be read as empty provocation, especially when it attempts to superficially dissect elements of American culture and violence, it remains a controversial conversation starter that needs to be seen to be believed. Whether it’s trolling us or posing a serious psychological question, it leaves us to solve its grim, wonderfully wincing puzzle.

The Drama releases April 3rd.