PLOT: When his network, NBC, moves him into a hot primetime slot, To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen will stop at nothing to make his show the biggest on television.
REVIEW: When it originally aired back in the 2000s, To Catch a Predator was watched by millions, shocking the public with its uncomfortable revelation that child predators lurked in plain sight, with many of the men captured on camera being seemingly normal “guy next door” types. Many outwardly ordinary men found themselves being asked, “Why don’t you have a seat?” by host Chris Hansen, with him even confronting a rabbi in one segment. About a year ago, a really excellent, nuanced documentary about the show called Predators (which is now streaming on Paramount+) was released, but it will no doubt be dwarfed in terms of attention by this hip A24 movie, with Robert Pattinson playing Hansen.
Primetime, which is directed by documentarian Lance Oppenheim (whose film with Nathan Fielder, You Can See Everything, is earning early raves), aims to be a satirical look at the media and its focus on the very worst of humanity, à la Network or Nightcrawler, but it doesn’t work as well as those films. They benefited from being fictional, but Oppenheim and his writer, Ajon Singh, turn their lens on a real person in the guise of Hansen, and his story is a lot more complex than they paint it as.
As played by Robert Pattinson, Hansen comes off as barely human, with him leering, cruel, and utterly devoid of any humanizing features. Anyone who actually watched To Catch a Predator knows that isn’t how Hansen came off, with audiences embracing him — initially, anyway — as righteous. Were he to have come off as he does here, the show likely would never have caught on. Having him portrayed this way works in a satire, but not as well when you’re telling a true story.
It’s also worth noting that while many, in hindsight, view Hansen and his producers as having turned something horrific into sordid entertainment, there’s also the fact that the men exposed on the show were indeed child predators, and, at least initially, one could see how Hansen and the network may have had good intentions. There’s never a moment in Primetime where you feel like Hansen or his venal producer, expertly played by a gum-chewing Merritt Wever, cares about anything beyond fame and ratings. The vibe is so heightened that when the film comes to its inevitable conclusion, in which a prominent district attorney (played by Alex Winter) finds himself caught up in the show with deadly results, you have a hard time really feeling the impact.
To be sure, Oppenheim is a skilled director, with Primetime intriguingly shot in a way that evokes the scuzzy, early-DV-video look of the era. Pattinson is similarly a great actor, but his Hansen never feels like an actual human being. In fact, Skyler Gisondo and Phoebe Bridgers fare much better as the two adult decoys hired by NBC to pose as minors, with both shown developing complicated feelings about what they’re doing. In short, they feel authentic, with Bridgers getting a rare moment of levity when Bookeem Woodbine’s old-school sheriff compliments her on her Nine Inch Nails shirt before asking what “NIN” means. Merritt Wever is also arresting as Hansen’s unscrupulous producer, although, like Pattinson, the vibe they are going for would be more appropriate for a fictional film rather than one based on reality.
I do wonder if Primetime would have been better had Hansen simply been used as inspiration rather than as the actual subject. At its worst, Primetime never — for a second — feels like it can offer any real insight into the phenomenon that was To Catch a Predator. It’s stylish and entertaining, but it also feels like a two-dimensional look at subject matter that demands to be taken seriously. In short, the satirical approach leads to it being a bit of a misfire.