I’ve grown weary with our national obsession over “To Catch a Predator,” the 2000s-era reality-television stunts in which on-camera sting operations targeted potential child predators. We’ve had those original segments on Dateline NBC, then a 2007 interrogation of them on 20/20, and more recently the similarly critical doc Predators. So my admiration for Primetime—a dramatization of the phenomenon’s heyday, with Robert Pattinson as host Chris Hansen—largely has to do with the way it functions as a meditation on and demonstration of the craft of acting. Pattinson is eerily convincing as Hansen, employing the dead eyes of a shark to hint at the soullessness of the enterprise, while also giving us a vision of Hansen as creepily excitable showman, one who’s never not performing (notice when he slips into his on-camera voice while in casual conversation). Pattinson delivers a disturbing tour de force (he also gives Hansen a frightening savior complex), but equally compelling is Skyler Gisondo (Booksmart, Superman) as an aspiring actor who takes a job as a “Predator” decoy (posing on-camera as an underage boy to lure suspects into Hansen’s snare). From the dexterity Gisondo brings to a video-taped audition to the slippery identities he manages as a decoy to his growing embodiment of moral qualm, Gisondo provides Primetime at least a small measure of humanity. (If you’re interested in a far more humane approach to this subject matter, I’d recommend the documentary Pervert Park.) Primetime also features a very good Phoebe Bridgers as another decoy and an even better Merritt Wever, who channels the pitiless Faye Dunaway in Network as Hansen’s mercenary producer. The movie is directed by Lance Oppenheim, who brings his own lurid fervor, from the underlit yet saturated, neo-noir lighting scheme to the voyeuristic use of the camera to the many grotesque close-ups.
(10/2/2026)
