LOS ANGELES, July 30 -- The dinner party game was Emma's idea. "What's the worst thing you've ever done?" seemed harmless enough, the kind of confession exercise that engaged couples perform for their closest friends over wine, grinning at minor misdeeds before someone changes the subject. Emma Harwood goes last. Her answer is not minor.

That scene, roughly twenty minutes into Kristoffer Borgli's dark comedy The Drama, is the load-bearing hinge around which the film's remaining hour turns. The A24 production, which opened domestically on April 3 and grossed $132.5 million worldwide against a $28 million production budget, arrives on HBO Max this Thursday, July 31, with a linear HBO broadcast the following evening at 8 p.m. ET. What it ca...