Los Angeles, CA – Lance Oppenheim’s feature debut takes the 2007 Esquire investigation “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” and turns the rise and collapse of To Catch a Predator into a psychological crime thriller, with Robert Pattinson playing series host Chris Hansen as he sets out to make television history. Hansen became the face of To Catch a Predator after Dateline NBC began working with Perverted Justice, the online vigilante outfit whose members posed as minors in chat rooms and arranged meetings with men they had lured into the sting. Hansen would then appear at the house, introduce himself as an NBC correspondent, and read the men their own messages back to them, turning an internet exchange into a piece of television theatre before the police intervened.
Oppenheim is an excellent fit for this material. The filmmaker has talked about how he grew up watching To Catch a Predator, while his previous documentaries Some Kind of Heaven and Ren Faire have both followed people ensconced in the peculiar realities they have built around themselves. Robert Pattinson is extraordinary. “I genuinely think this is the best performance of his career,” the review notes. He has found something incredibly foul in Hansen. Every one of his gestures and mannerisms feels vetted by corporate communications and calibrated for an audience, even when there is nobody around to impress. Hansen is creepy because there is nothing especially exotic about him. He has the posture and manners of a respectable man, but he uses all of it to indulge a spectacularly inflated sense of his own righteousness.
The supporting cast is just as sharp. Skyler Gisondo is terrific as Dan, the young decoy whose participation makes the production look considerably uglier from the inside. Merritt Wever is magnificent as producer Andie Bender, bringing a tired authority to the enterprise. Matthew Maher is positively disgusting as Xavier, the online vigilante behind Perverted Justice. Phoebe Bridgers is also surprisingly good as Del in her feature debut. The filmmaking is where Oppenheim gets properly deranged. Primetime looks like a television signal that has developed a fever, with grainy early-2000s camcorder imagery colliding with garish practical lighting, smeared lenses, crushed blacks, and a boxy 4:3 frame that keeps the characters trapped inside their own broadcast.
Over its NBC run, To Catch a Predator produced 238 apprehensions, yet only 36 ended in guilty pleas or convictions. Oppenheim is doing something genuinely devious with Primetime. He takes the moral alibi that made To Catch a Predator so consumable and subjects the act of watching to the same scrutiny. “This is exploitation art made from exploitative artists, and it’s wickedly entertaining to witness,” the review concludes. Primetime is currently running in theatres.
