An impending wedding reels towards going terribly wrong and right off a cliff in “The Drama,” a dry and ever-so-dark romantic comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.

The latest from the writer-director of “Dream Scenario” begins awkward, with a “meet cute” right on the cusp of cringey, and staggers into one even more uncomfortable situation/turn-of-events after another.

You want to know why marriages rates continue to fall in the Western World, here’s a worst-case-scenario comedy that kind of explains it and makes you squirm and sneak peeks at your watch as you do.

“Man,” I muttered to myself more than once. “I cannot wait for this to be over.” And in this case, that’s not a bad thing.

Robert Pattinson is our leading man, a tossle-haired and awkward museum curator who takes a fancy to a pretty woman (Zendaya) sitting by herself in a coffee shop. She’s reading, in her own world.

When she steps away from her seat, he snaps a photo of her book. By the time she’s sat back down, he’s researched it just enough to attempt to strike up a conversation. But when he attempts to apologize for his attempted pick-up, he finds out she’s deaf in the ear he was talking to.

“Let’s start over,” she offers.

He laughs. Awkwardly. But a date is made and a relationship begins. And we know that whatever happens, we’re in capable hands. R. Patts has always done tossle-haired and awkward well. And Zendaya is the physical embodiment of smart and beautiful but possibly approachable.

Getting past his not-apologetic-enough admission that he hasn’t actually read Harper Ellison’s “The Damage” (a non-existent novel) and her lightly-caustic comeback to that confession, they seem well-matched. It’s no shock that we pick up their story as he is composing his wedding speech and she is putting off doing hers.

But Sartre’s famous observation that “Hell is other people” could be this couple’s credo. A tipsy night of sharing “the worst thing I’ve ever done” with the married couple Rachel (Alanna Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie), who are their maid of honor and best man, respectively, is where it really goes wrong.

Because whatever awful admissions Rachel, Mike and Charles make, sweet and sweet-faced Emma’s announcement that she put serious thought into planning and practicing for her own mass shooting at the Louisiana high school that made her miserable is downright triggering.

Mike is taken a bit aback and Rachel flips out. “Emma, what the F—!” Charles, who “obsesses over things,” responds as much to their mania over this psychological “tell” as the actual thing-that-didn’t-happen as related by the woman he loves.

Emma and he might endure the pushy choreographer’s dance lessons for their “first dance” at the wedding as a team and support one another over the meal selection and wines. But every other detail the Brit and the American have to take care of is downright fraught from here until the finish line.

If there is to BE a finish line.

Trouble at work, issues with the DJ, a disheartened follow-up with the florist, a painfully wounded meeting with the wedding photographer because the camera-doesn’t-lie and dire warnings masked as “support” by Rachel and Mike — total DISASTERS as maid of honor and best man, BTW — all point to a fiasco waiting to happen, and catered, to boot.

“I love you so much it hurts” has never seemed more literal.

Writer-director Borgli has some chilling takes on what inspires school shooters. As his hero won’t let this go and as his heroine recounts her past (illustrated in flashbacks), we get confirmation of what many of us suspect.

“I liked the aesthetic” of being a school shooter, “the character I was playing,” Emma blurts out at one point. It’s the camo, the military rifle with its big ammo clip, the scowl for the computer camera as her teen self (played by Jordyn Curet) dresses up menacingly and tries to record her “message to the world” before doing the deed.

But she’s 15 and she has trouble. The PC wants to “update” rather than record. And a blue screen of death provides that punchline. Windows, am I right?

It’s all lightly or terribly dark — the weeping jags (his), her fury at others’ interfering even as she revisits that grim teen period and its comically-twisted aftermath.

The leads are terrific, the bit players biting and distinctly believable “types.” Athie (of “Jurassic World” Dominion,” “The Burial” and TV’s “The Get Down”) is convincingly unsteady at being “steady” and Haim (“Licorice Pizza” and “One Battle After Another”) has made fingernails-on-a-blackboard “grating” her brand.

They and their director build “The Drama” as you squirm in your seat and count the minutes and scenes to come, desperate for the nearly perfect finale because you’ve figured out that Borgli’s kink is making you uncomfortable.

Which he does. The smug bastard.

Rating: R, a bit of violence sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson,
Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim and Hailey Gates.

Credits: Scripted and directed by
Kristoffer Borgli. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:45