LOS ANGELES — Alana Haim’s sharp supporting turn in A24’s “The Drama” has become part of a wider debate over how the film uses a concealed school-shooting storyline to fracture a wedding-week romance, April 28, 2026.
The backlash has grown because gun-safety advocates and viewers say the film’s lighter romantic-comedy marketing obscured subject matter many consider traumatic, while some critics argue Haim’s Rachel gives the story its most uncomfortable moral pressure point.
Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, “The Drama” stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as an engaged couple whose wedding week is thrown off course by an unexpected revelation, according to A24’s official synopsis. Haim plays Rachel, Emma’s maid of honor, whose reaction to Emma’s confession turns a private disclosure into a public reckoning among friends.
Why Alana Haim became a flashpoint in “The Drama”
Haim’s role is not the largest in the film, but it is one of the most combustible. In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Haim said Rachel was unlike her real personality, calling the character “so mean” and saying she kept apologizing to Zendaya between takes because of the harshness of their scenes.
That tension is central to why Rachel has taken on a life beyond a typical supporting part. The character begins as Emma’s loyal friend, then becomes one of the people most visibly disturbed after Emma reveals that, as a teenager, she once planned a school shooting but did not carry it out. Rachel’s outrage is complicated by her own connection to gun violence, making her both a voice of alarm and, for some viewers, a symbol of judgment without grace.
Vulture’s close read of Rachel argued that Haim’s character may be the film’s “secret villain,” pointing to the way she pivots from cheerful friend to moral prosecutor. That framing has helped make Haim’s performance part of the film’s larger argument about who gets forgiven, who gets condemned and who gets to decide the difference.
The school-shooting plot and the marketing backlash
The strongest criticism has centered less on Haim herself than on the film’s use and promotion of the school-shooting reveal. People reported that March for Our Lives criticized the film’s marketing as “deeply misaligned” with the seriousness of its subject matter, saying a story tied to school violence requires more responsible framing than a simple shock twist.
The criticism continued after release. In a later Entertainment Weekly discussion, gun-control advocate Mia Tretta and mass-shootings researcher Jillian Peterson raised concerns about the film’s comedic tone, survivor perspective and decision to make the revelation a surprise for audiences. Peterson said the film “did really shock me,” especially because the marketing positioned the subject as an “inappropriate twist.”
Those reactions put Rachel in a difficult narrative position. Within the movie, she is the character most willing to say that Emma’s past cannot be brushed aside. Outside the movie, some critics of the film have echoed Rachel’s alarm, while others have questioned whether the character’s anger is written to look performative or self-serving.
How older Alana Haim roles shape the response
The debate lands differently because Haim’s screen persona has been built quickly and visibly. In 2021, an Associated Press profile described her leap into Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” as a first-time film role that drew near-universal praise. Soon after, AP reported that the National Board of Review selected Haim and Cooper Hoffman for breakthrough performances in the coming-of-age comedy.
Her follow-up choices also showed a move toward filmmakers with distinct, sometimes prickly tones. Cannes listed Haim among the cast of Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” in its 2025 competition lineup, while a 2024 People production report placed her in “The Drama” alongside Zendaya, Pattinson and Mamoudou Athie before the film’s eventual controversy took shape.
That continuity matters. Haim arrived in film as a naturalistic presence, then moved into roles that ask her to unsettle the room. Rachel is the starkest version of that shift yet: blunt, reactive, sometimes funny and often cruel. The performance works because Haim lets Rachel be uncomfortable rather than simply likable.
What the backlash means for “The Drama”
The controversy has made “The Drama” harder to discuss as only a star-driven A24 romance. It is now a film caught between provocation and responsibility, with viewers split over whether its harshest idea opens a necessary conversation or uses a real national trauma too casually.
Haim’s part sits at the center of that split. Rachel is not the character who confesses to the planned violence, but she is the character who makes the confession socially explosive. Her anger gives the film force, but it also exposes why the movie has been so divisive: the audience is asked not only what Emma deserves, but whether Rachel’s response is justice, fear, hypocrisy or all three.
For Alana Haim, “The Drama” marks another step away from the easy glow of a breakout debut. Whether viewers see Rachel as the film’s conscience or its sharpest flaw, the role has made Haim impossible to treat as a casual supporting player. In a movie built to provoke, she delivers the performance people are still arguing about.
