Primetime

At once timely and a depiction of a bygone era, Primetime has generated significant buzz ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and subsequent theatrical rollout, not least in the US where the subject of Chris Hansen and the original incarnation of his TV franchise remains a fascinating subject (also explored in 2025 in the riveting documentary Predators, to which Primetime sort of acts as a companion piece). Internationally, the project’s appeal is largely in the hands of producer and star Robert Pattinson, who gets to once again flex his acting muscles in compellingly weirdo mode.

The films zeroes in on a specific era of Hansen’s work at NBC, when he achieved nationwide fame with To Catch a Predator, a segment of Dateline where, in partnership with the vigilante group Perverted-Justice, he would confront pedophiles showing up to what they believed to be a meeting with a minor they’d chatted up online (in reality, the teens in question were decoys employed by the production). Such was the program’s success, it got to the point introduced in Primetime, when the network suggested moving the segment to 9 PM, in direct competition with ABC’s sci-fi drama hit Lost (in what could be a nod to director Lance Oppenheim’s documentary roots, former NBC head honcho Jeff Zucker plays an exaggerated version of himself).

“We’re going to be bigger than Lost!”, Hansen actually says in a scene that might fly over younger viewers’ heads, as it may be hard for streaming-raised audiences to grasp just how important and massive linear TV ratings could be two decades ago, with Lost alone averaging 19 million viewers at its peak (for comparison, ABC’s current longest-serving drama, Grey’s Anatomy, averaged around 7 million during the 2024-2025 season). But with the prospect of great ratings comes great responsibility, and Hansen wants to make sure the new episodes will be spectacular. For that to happen, he will need to catch a high-ranking individual.

Those who go in already knowing the full history of Hansen’s career will be aware of the implications, as increasing scandals tied to the show’s ethics, or lack thereof (future Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker wrote in 2008, “When a TV show makes you feel sorry for potential child-rapists, you know it’s doing something wrong”), led to its cancelation in 2008, although the host has since revived the format a bunch of times outside of the traditional network system (including one incarnation named Hansen vs. Predator). Anyone going in blind might leave baffled, as the film’s refusal to signpost – there are no title cards explaining what happened past the timeline shown on screen – is both a strength and a potential source of frustration.

For at its core, Primetime is not an indictment of the show itself, although it expertly recreates the aesthetic of the era to highlight how To Catch a Predator not just blurred the line between journalism and entertainment, but gleefully stepped over it every chance it got. Rather, the movie is a meditation on the performative nature of the people purporting to be telling the truth, with the strongest scenes being the ones that are a two-hander between people with opposing viewpoints: Hansen and his producer (Merritt Wever), said producer and people from rival networks trying to appropriate the concept without fully understanding it, and, most crucially, Hansen and cast member Dan Plumb, aka Decoy Dan (Skyler Gisondo).

The latter, a struggling thespian who agrees to pose as a 13-year old in hopes of finally obtaining his Screen Actors Guild card and proper representation by an agent, is warned by his female counterpart (Phoebe Bridgers) against treating it like a regular job, due to the particularly harrowing or bizarre nature of some of the cases the team investigates (one perp sprays whipped cream on his manhood right before Hansen enters the kitchen to confront him with the chat logs). In a way, Oppenheim is positing that the hired actors are the most authentic members of this peculiar group.

This becomes painfully clear when Hansen dismissively says to Dan, “Unlike you, I don’t act”, a statement we know to be false since the very first scene of the film shows him rehearsing the lines he’s going to throw back at his target, and he later asks for take after take while recording a promotional voiceover for the show. Pattinson, whose mastery of Hansen’s speech patterns is uncanny, relishes the opportunity to expose the cracks in the armor of someone whose public persona is a carefully studied, ratings-chasing performance (in fact, the main attempt at showing the “real” Hansen away from the cameras – an adultery subplot – doesn’t do much besides slowing things down a tad).

Drenched in blue lighting that makes him look more like a vampire than he ever did as Edward Cullen (a character he began playing just as the original To Catch a Predator was about to meet its demise), the British actor is magnetic enough to make Primetime compelling despite the inevitably divisive nature of its laser-focused narrative. At his best/worst, his version of Hansen is the ideal modern-day incarnation of the question asked at the end of Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust a few decades ago: “I wonder who the real cannibals are.”

Director: Lance Oppenheim
Screenwriter: Ajon Singh
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher, Anna Faris, Bokeem Woodbine, Tony Revolori, Jonathan Lipnicki, Alex Winter
Producers: Robert Pattinson, Brighton McCloskey, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Ari Aster, Fred Berger, Lars Knudsen, William Iannaccone, Ben Kahn, Christian Vasquez
Cinematography: David Bolen
Production design: Alex Digerlando
Costume design: Alex Bovaird
Music: Ari Balouzian
Sound: Chris Welcker
Production companies: A24, Range Media Partners, Icki Eneo Arlo, Square Peg
World sales: A24 International
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
In English
110 minutes