Rating 5/10
I remember To Catch a Predator and its host, Chris Hansen. The TV program was an awkward mix of catching targets and publicly shaming them for entertainment. Protecting children was the ostensible purpose. Watching the creeps squirm was the attraction. That tension offers much to explore in Primetime. It finds the spectacle distasteful but is equally intent on staging its own sideshow.
In 2006, Hansen’s televised sting operations have become a ratings sensation. The show hires aspiring actor Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo) to pose as a teenage boy in hopes of earning his Screen Actors Guild card. The operation includes online vigilante Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher), fellow decoy Del Harvey (Phoebe Bridgers), and police chief Cortland Gunn (Bokeem Woodbine). Dan is initially unsure what he signed up for, but gradually comes to admire Hansen. The host, meanwhile, is consumed by television success as the National Enquirer threatens to expose his extramarital affair. A potentially high-profile target in Texas (Alex Winter) gives Hansen a chance to deliver his biggest episode yet.
This marks the narrative feature debut of documentarian Lance Oppenheim, best known for HBO’s Ren Faire. His approach is highly stylized and aggressively unpleasant. The atmosphere is seedy. Conversations get sordid. Hansen reads explicit chat transcripts with a gleeful intensity that makes the man watching these perverts appear sleazy himself. For the first 30 or 40 minutes, this fever dream of television ambition is fascinating. The pacing is brisk, and the strange personalities hold our attention. But then the weirdness continues without revealing anything. A lurid subject receives a lurid treatment.
Robert Pattinson is the most compelling reason to watch. His version of Chris Hansen is giving Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. Honestly, that’s high praise in my book. It’s a fiercely committed, gloriously heightened performance that pushes past realism into something almost operatic. The cadence of his voice carries the self-importance of a man convinced he’s found his divine calling. References to fellow journalist Stone Phillips reinforce his professional jealousy. He never comes across as a recognizable human being, though. He is entertaining as a flamboyant manifestation of camp.
The trouble is that Ajon Singh’s screenplay reduces Hansen to vanity and an obsession with ratings, so Pattinson’s colorful performance has nowhere to go. Merritt Wever brings a nasty comic energy to producer Andie Bender, whose success attracts a rival network’s interest. NBC executive Jeff Zucker briefly appears as himself, expressing distaste for the program while rewarding its popularity with a primetime slot. The point is obvious: television executives will embrace something ugly if enough people watch. Gisondo’s “Decoy Dan” supplies the closest thing to a moral center. He seems troubled by turning the pursuit of predators into entertainment, but his conflict remains unexplored. The screenplay gives us reasons to judge these people, but not the depth to understand them.
The portrayal of the suspects raises questions. These men arrive intending to have sex with minors, yet the film often presents them as figures of pity. A former Marine (Tony Revolori) breaks down in tears as the producers make sure the cameras capture his agony. A man with cerebral palsy (Matt Smith) laments that he rarely leaves home. A rabbi (Bob Ari) angrily challenges Hansen’s right to confront him, shifting attention from his own intentions to the host’s methods. There is room to question public humiliation while still holding these men accountable. But the movie is more interested in their distress at being caught than in the harm they intended to cause.
Primetime reaches its shocking climax without examining the aftermath, the consequences for those involved, or whether the series even accomplished its goal of protecting children. Hansen’s emotional collapse supplies a dramatic moment, but it never makes clear whether he assumes any culpability for what happened.
A film doesn’t have to answer every question it raises. However, it should do more than assemble a pastiche of disturbing events without any analysis. Sure, the people producing this circus deserve our scrutiny, but please do more than just make them grotesque caricatures. Pattinson gives us good reason to tune in. Too bad the movie has so little to say.
09-24-26