PRIMETIME (2026)

Starring Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher,  Bokeem Woodbine, Anna Faris, Jonathan Lipnicki, Tony Revolori, Alex Winter, Eric Rahill, Sean Bridgers, Jeff Zucker, Creed Bratton, Caroline Hebert, Jessica Hecht, Bob Ari, Matt Smith, Franco Brocato, Luca Brocato, Bill Heck, Jessica Blackmore, Mike Harkins and Daniel Garber.

Screenplay by Ajon Singh.

Directed by Lance Oppenheim.

Distributed by A24. 110 minutes. Rated R.

The mid-2000’s TV series To Catch a Predator had an extremely precipitous rise and fall – even for the volatile world of reality television. The show started as a series of segments for the mostly legit true crime series Dateline NBC but quickly became so popular that it was given its own timeslot as a stand-alone series and it made a short-lived star of its host, Chris Hansen.

The concept behind To Catch a Predator was simple and primitively satisfying. There was an online watchdog group called Perverted Justice that would hang out in internet chat rooms pretending to be underage and try to… well… catch predators. They would have a young-looking and sounding member (they had both male and female) flirt with the men, sometimes even chat on the phone or webcam.

Then they would invite the men to come to their “homes” – while their parents were supposedly away. When the guys would show up, they were met by Hansen and a camera crew, who would confront the men. What were they doing visiting a minor? He would read from chat transcripts – all the horrific things the men had suggested and appeared to be expecting. Then the police would take the men to jail.

It became appointment television for a few years. The fans cheered as the pedophiles were taken to justice. And if, just perhaps, some of these guys may have been slightly entrapped, they got what was coming to them, right? Maybe sometimes you have to do a little bad to do some good. They tended to come from the mindset that you can’t cheat an honest man.

The movie Primetime – which looks at the rise and fall of the phenomenon – suggests that was until the ratings of the show made the host and crew start to cross legal and moral lines for the almighty Nielsens. The more people they caught, the more they had to up the stakes to keep the viewership engaged. They started taking bigger risks and breaking more rules to get someone who would be an even bigger story.

And eventually they pushed so far that the results became tragic.

Primetime puts the viewer into the awkward position of having to almost feel sorry for a possible child molester, because, fairly or not, he was obviously targeted and entrapped – simply for ratings. The guy resisted the approaches of the “victim” and refused to engage multiple times until he was finally sort of dragged into a situation that was life-changing. And even then, he would not invite the “child” to his home, so the show went to him.

This was not even the only questionable approach of a predator reenacted here, but that was the moment when they finally completely crossed the line that would end up finishing off the show. Would the man have eventually succumbed to his darker impulses and acted on his flirtation with someone he believed was a thirteen-year-old boy? Possibly. Was the man wrong to have even gotten into that kind of situation? Abso-fucking-lutely. But did he deserve to have his life and career blown up over a very bad impulse that he didn’t ever totally give into, despite being actively goaded? That is more of a gray area.

The real Chris Hansen has come out strongly against this film, which is understandable, he and his show come out looking very shady throughout. Particularly the characterization of Hansen himself. I acknowledge I have no way of knowing how accurate a portrayal of the man is. However, watching it I found it hard to believe the real Hansen could have possibly been as off-putting as he is shown to be here. Robert Pattinson plays Hansen as a humorless, holier-than-thou, self-righteous, duplicitous, ratings-obsessed hypocrite who skates the line of journalistic integrity many times before he completely jumps into the dark side.

Of course, Hansen, who apparently still has a much smaller-time version of Predator with the series Takedown with Chris Hansen on some streaming service I’ve never heard of called TruBlu, does have reason to protest the film. His brand, already long-tarnished, probably doesn’t need what he considers a hatchet job.

I just wish that Primetime didn’t make me think that maybe he’s not completely wrong.

Primetime has many good qualities – it is well-filmed, well-acted, based on a genuinely  intriguing true story – but you tend to respect Primetime more than enjoy it. In fact, as constructed, with such disturbing themes and so many deeply unlikable characters, the idea of enjoyment is probably completely superfluous.

I would like to think that much like the TV series that inspired it, Primetime probably went into this with a good heart and good intentions – to shine a light on an extremely dark misdeed. (Pedophilia for the series, irresponsible journalism and lust for fame for the movie.) They were apparently trying to Chris Hansen Chris Hansen.

However, much like those squirming and desperate perverts that Hansen so often turned the tables on, the movie is so intent on indicting To Catch a Predator that it doesn’t always take the time to try to understand it or offer a complete, balanced picture of its sins. It expects you to take what is on the surface as the absolute truth.

Take for example, Pattinson’s portrayal of Hansen. As stated before, I don’t know how accurate to the truth it was, although through interviews Hansen himself doesn’t seem as tightly wound and treacherous as he is portrayed. (I’m not blaming Pattinson; he plays the part very well with what he is given to do.)

However, Hansen is not the only moral void here. Take the role of his producer, Andie Bender, who is extremely well-played by Merritt Wever. She is the nicest, most likeable and intelligent character here, but she is also ready and able to do anything – to overlook journalistic integrity and break rules – just to get a story.

Alex Winter (of the Bill & Ted movies) makes a serious gamble on playing one of the pedophiles and gives a surprisingly empathetic performance.  The Office co-star Creed Bratton has a memorably unsettling cameo as a slightly deranged fan. Bokeem Woodbine plays a gung-ho sheriff who decides to make Predator’s chase of pedos his own personal vendetta. Former NBC exec Jeff Zucker even does a good-natured cameo as himself, allowing himself to look just as sleazy as everyone else involved.

The only characters who come off with any complicated humanity are the young decoys used to trap the predators, as played with hesitant uncertainty by Skyler Gisondo and singer Phoebe Bridgers.

With so many unsavory characters and such a disturbing subject matter, Primetime can’t help but sometimes feel uncomfortably sordid.

Also, for a film that is this dark, there are quite a few laugh lines that exist awkwardly in the middle of this pitch-black situation. I get that they are there for momentary stress relief, and they do often work at that function, but they feel at odds with the film’s general tone and solemnity.

Primetime is a fascinating but flawed reckoning – a bold, uneasy film so determined to condemn To Catch a Predator that it sometimes mirrors the very absolutism it critiques. It wants to expose the rot behind a cultural phenomenon but sometimes gets tangled in its own outrage. It’s compelling, troubling, and occasionally uneven, but it’s never dull. Whether it offers a fair reckoning or simply replaces one form of moral theater with another is up for debate, but it certainly leaves you thinking about the cost of turning human frailty into entertainment.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: September 22, 2026.