It’s fascinating to watch a movie dramatize a television show that was already so theatrical in its own right. Primetime takes the true story of Chris Hansen and To Catch a Predator and turns it into a deeply stylized, often unsettling examination of the man behind one of the most recognizable television franchises of the mid-2000s. Rather than simply recreating the show, writer-director Lance Oppenheim transforms the story into something that often feels like a psychological thriller, complete with harsh lighting, bold colors, extreme close-ups, and a constant sense that someone is lurking just outside the frame. The result is an uncomfortable but fascinating movie that understands exactly how strange the world of To Catch a Predator really was.
Set firmly in the mid-2000s, Primetime does an excellent job recreating the look and atmosphere of the era. There is a deliberate artificiality to the production that makes it feel like you have been dropped directly into the world of cable television at its peak. Some of the film’s most entertaining moments come from its recreations of actual To Catch a Predator segments, with Robert Pattinson’s Chris Hansen appearing almost like a movie villain waiting patiently in the shadows before suddenly emerging to confront his target. There is an intentional irony to this imagery because Hansen is essentially being framed like a predator himself, stalking his prey before revealing himself. Except, of course, the people he is hunting are the actual predators.
That contradiction is at the center of Primetime, and the movie is smart enough not to ignore it. Pattinson gives yet another phenomenal performance this year following his work in The Drama and The Odyssey, continuing what has been an incredible stretch of performances. His biggest accomplishment here is almost entirely vocal. His transformation into Hansen is so complete that there are moments when you genuinely forget you are listening to Robert Pattinson. He doesn’t simply imitate Hansen’s mannerisms. He completely changes his voice, cadence, and delivery to the point where the performance becomes almost uncanny. It is particularly impressive when compared directly with recreated segments from the original program because Pattinson manages to capture the strange theatrical rhythm that made Hansen so recognizable.
But Primetime is not simply a Chris Hansen biopic. One of the film’s most interesting choices is giving significant attention to Daniel, played marvelously by Skyler Gisondo, an actor who finds himself participating in the production without fully understanding what he has signed up for. Daniel becomes one of the actors tasked with pretending to be a 13-year-old online in order to lure potential predators into a house. Through his perspective, the movie gets to explore the production of To Catch a Predator from another set of eyes.
That perspective adds another layer to the story because Primetime is clearly aware of the importance of Hansen’s work while also acknowledging the criticism surrounding the original program. To Catch a Predator undoubtedly exposed people who intended to sexually exploit children and, in many cases, helped prevent them from reaching actual victims. At the same time, there was always an uncomfortable question about how much of the show was journalism and how much was entertainment. The movie leans into that ambiguity.
There are moments when Hansen seems to develop something resembling a hero complex, and Primetime repeatedly asks whether he is doing this because he genuinely wants to protect children or because he has become fascinated by his own role as the person who gets to expose these people on television. The movie never needs to completely answer that question. In fact, its refusal to provide a simple answer is part of what makes the character compelling.
At the same time, there is a limit to how cynical the movie can become about Hansen. His targets are people attempting to meet children for sexual purposes, and the film never loses sight of how horrifying that reality is. Whatever complicated motivations Hansen may have, there is still an obvious societal value in preventing these individuals from reaching vulnerable children. Pattinson’s performance makes it clear that Hansen has an intense disgust toward the people he is confronting, and that moral certainty becomes an interesting counterweight to the movie’s questions about exploitation and spectacle.
Oppenheim’s direction is arguably the movie’s greatest strength. Making his narrative feature debut, he approaches the material with an incredibly confident visual language. The camera constantly gets uncomfortably close to its subjects, while the lighting can become harsh and almost expressionistic. Primetime looks less like a conventional true-story drama and more like a psychological horror movie. The bold colors and carefully constructed compositions reinforce the artificiality of television while simultaneously making the characters feel trapped inside it.
The biggest weakness is that the second act doesn’t always maintain the momentum established by the opening. The movie occasionally feels like it is circling the same ideas without allowing the stakes to build as dramatically as they should. The audience is told that the situation is becoming more dangerous, but those stakes don’t always feel as immediate as the film wants them to. There is also a slight disconnect created by the competing perspectives of Chris and Daniel. Both are compelling, but the movie sometimes feels like it is caught between telling Hansen’s story and telling the story of the young actor being pulled into his world.
Still, Primetime works because of its performances and its remarkably bold visual identity. Oppenheim takes a story that could have easily become a straightforward true-crime drama and turns it into something much stranger and more psychologically complex. And at the center of it all is Pattinson, who disappears so completely into Chris Hansen that the performance becomes one of the film’s biggest attractions.
Primetime understands that To Catch a Predator was never simply about catching predators. It was also about television, performance, morality, and the complicated relationship between doing something good and turning that good deed into entertainment. The movie doesn’t necessarily resolve those contradictions, but it makes them impossible to ignore, resulting in a fascinating and deeply stylized portrait of one of television’s most unusual phenomena.
SCORE: 7/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 7 equates to “Good.” A successful piece of entertainment that is worth checking out, but it may not appeal to everyone.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Primetime review.
