{"id":82557,"date":"2026-09-06T03:45:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T19:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=82557"},"modified":"2026-09-06T03:45:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T19:45:49","slug":"primetime-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=82557","title":{"rendered":"Primetime Review"},"content":{"rendered":"


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This review is based on a screening from the Venice Film Festival. <\/em>Primetime<\/em><\/u> is in theaters on September 25.<\/em><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to be familiar with Chris Hansen or To Catch a Predator to enjoy Primetime \u2014 director Lance Oppenheim\u2019s feature debut \u2014 but it certainly helps. That\u2019s not because the movie sticks closely to real events, but rather, because it takes some audacious swings while purposefully fudging the timeline. Watching exactly how and why it takes these liberties is a delight of its own; the result is a sleazy, rollicking, razor-wire drama that\u2019s every bit about the rise of reality TV as it is a spiritual part of it. Anything is fair game if it makes for a good story.<\/p>\n

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It begins with TV personality Hansen (Robert Pattinson) privately repeating sexually explicit chat logs sent from a skeevy former Marine (Tony Revolori) to a fictitious adolescent. As he rehearses to ambush the unsuspecting perv \u2014 the premise of his hit sting operation, which ran from 2004 to 2007 \u2014 the movie starts to reveal its lurid flourishes. Awash in shadow, its heightened version of Hansen is a cartoonishly sinister figure who steps before the cameras with all the boastful poise of a Broadway veteran. When he finally reveals himself to Revolori \u2014 after gazing at him through a crack in a door, like some stalker or slasher villain \u2014 he towers over the former soldier like a hunter cornering prey.<\/p>\n

As his show rises through the ranks, NBC executives make eager demands \u2014 Bigger! Flashier! More! \u2014 which leads Hansen and his team to more opportunistically (and more voraciously) pursue potential perps, eventually chasing someone they suspect of having a position of influence. Those in the know will recognize this throughline as that of the series\u2019 botched episode emanating from Murphy, Texas, and the subject of the incredible long-form Esquire piece<\/u> on which Primetime was based. However, en route to that tragic debacle, the movie takes incredibly entertaining turns, buoyed by a raucous visual energy while remaining rooted in surprisingly cogent drama.<\/p>\n

The film has no qualms about its culprits\u2019 misdeeds, but it makes sure to frame Hansen and, well, almost everyone involved with the show as some kind of seducer too, whether through its visual framing or its cast\u2019s creepy physicality. A magnetic Merritt Wever plays Hansen\u2019s fictitious producer Andie Bender, whose polite tone disguises exploitative commands, while Matthew Maher portrays the real Xavier Von Erk, the keyboard warrior enthusiastically ensnaring potential perps. Rounding out the sting crew are the experienced, conscientious adult decoy Del (Phoebe Bridgers), a self-professed activist who has the bait-and-switch process of welcoming child predators down pat, and nubile newcomer Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo) \u2014 based loosely on Dan Schrack \u2014 a wannabe actor out to prove himself and join the Screen Actors Guild.<\/p>\n

At the center of it all is Pattinson\u2019s borderline sociopath. His Hansen is an animated, empty, Patrick Bateman-like vessel for celebrity allure.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

Gisondo is the movie\u2019s na\u00efve heart and soul. While initially unaware of the job he agrees to, Dan is eager to please his bosses, especially the imposing Hansen, with whom he forms a perverse father-son dynamic. All Dan wants is approval, but Hansen\u2019s attention is always elsewhere, either on trying to up his TV ratings, or on retaining the illusion of domestic bliss with his wife and sons, while he\u2019s either out philandering \u2014 a later development in Hansen\u2019s life brought forward for the movie \u2014 or worse, making money off garish spectacle.<\/p>\n

The real Hansen hasn\u2019t seen the film at the time of this writing, though this hasn\u2019t stopped him from threatening<\/u> legal action. Regardless, it\u2019s hard to imagine he\u2019d be pleased with Pattinson\u2019s portrayal \u2014 but unfortunately, he might be alone in his displeasure. The Batman star has never been better or more explosive, delivering a jester-like performance as a man envious of other news hosts\u2019 success \u2014 and by proxy, of the era of war-as-entertainment. Pattinson smuggles, beneath the character\u2019s wholesome poise, a petulant, paranoid man with a distinctly rehearsed quality. That he nails Hansen\u2019s voice is a fantastic party trick, but this is, quite fittingly, the only truly Hansen-esque thing about him. He\u2019s Chris Hansen in name and occupation; in spirit, he\u2019s an impish embodiment of Hollywood id at the turn of the century, a TV landscape defined by fa\u00e7ade, and the willingness to step on anyone to get ahead.<\/p>\n

Driven enough to believe his own hype, Hansen commands the movie\u2019s breakneck unfurling as the sickly centerpiece of several rapid montages and a palette that\u2019s both oversaturated and has too much contrast for comfort. Its sensory re-creation of cheap, mid-2000s video recordings makes it especially eerie, as though Primetime were a version of a events we were never meant to see \u2014 made all the more haunting by Hansen\u2019s strange segues into fictitious Indian folklore, meant to build himself up as some spiritual savior.<\/p>\n

The dialogue and its double meanings are incredibly on-the-nose \u2014 what Hansen says, versus what he means deep down, is a disconnect apparent to everyone but him \u2014 resulting in some jaw-dropping hilarity. While there\u2019s certainly a wider discussion to be had about the show\u2019s methods and its modern legacy, this conversation is already underway courtesy of the aforementioned Esquire piece, as well as David Osit\u2019s 2025 documentary Predators, an intimate retrospective on the series.<\/p>\n

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Primetime, on the other hand, is a macabre, poetic echo of the temptations To Catch a Predator first tapped into. Its public pillorying led to plenty of cases that couldn\u2019t be prosecuted, but the film doesn\u2019t seek to paint that wider picture. It instead remains nauseatingly focused on the base desires of the show\u2019s creators and its fans, which it dramatizes through its radioactive texture. The film feels practically toxic, with characters who are entirely off-putting to watch, whether by way of Wever constantly popping her chewing gum, or a cameoing Creed Bratton (of The Office fame) appearing as a Hansen admirer turned on by fantasies of violence.<\/p>\n

At the center of it all is Pattinson\u2019s borderline sociopath. His Hansen is an animated, empty, Patrick Bateman-like vessel for celebrity allure, who remains the fulcrum of Oppenheim\u2019s spinning, voyeuristic camera and its high-octane thrills. These are born not from guns and bombs, or even the stakes of catching a predator, but from the sheer exhilaration of seeing just how low Hansen and his cohorts will stoop to create entertainment, paving the path for the content-at-all-cost landscape in which we live today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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This review is based on a screening from the Venice Film Festival. Primetime is in theaters on September 25. You don\u2019t have to be familiar…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[18531,28],"class_list":["post-82557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-primetime","tag-review","wpcat-32-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/82558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}