‘Primetime’ review: Robert Pattinson is ‘To Catch A Predator’ host Chris Hansen in visually striking, dramatically contrived thriller | Reviews | #childpredator | #kidsaftey | #childsaftey

Dir: Lance Oppenheim. US. 2026. 110mins

In ordinary houses, on ordinary streets in America, behind white picket fences and manicured lawns, monsters are lurking. That was the nightmare peddled by popular mid-2000s US reality show To Catch A Predator which saw host Chris Hansen head sting operations to catch paedophiles live on camera – badged as justice but packaged as entertainment. In Primetime, Robert Pattinson puts in a striking performance as the embattled Hansen, and Merritt Wever is phenomenal as (fictional) producer Andie Bender. Yet coming just a year after David Osit’s excellent documentary Predators, and featuring much in the way of dramatic contrivance, Primetime can feel like a somewhat lurid dramatisation of a knotty real-life subject.

A lurid dramatization of a knotty real-life subject

Primetime is the fiction feature debut of documentarian Lance Oppenheim (Spermworld, Some Kind Of Heaven) and boasts filmmaker Ari Aster amongst its producers. Premiering in Venice competition, the feature will release on September 26 in the US, where the cultural legacy of TCAP should draw a solid audience. Elsewhere, the presence of Pattinson, riding high after The Drama and The Odyssey, will be a major selling point, and his performance, along with a superb supporting cast and those stunning visuals, could propel the film into the awards conversation. Yet audiences who have seen Predators, which premiered at Sundance 2025, may not be quite so enamoured.

That documentary provided a comprehensive study of the NBC show, featuring interviews with several of its key players – including Hansen himself – to highlight the uneasy ethics of the production. Here, Oppenheim and debut screenwriter Ajon Singh operate in the same shadowy areas, highlighting Hansen as a conflicted man who believes he has the best intentions, but who refuses to confront the real-world consequences of his actions.

The film is set in 2006, a time before social media and digital streaming had changed the TV landscape. Every network is chasing ratings and NBC is no different; Hansen is delighted when TCAP is bumped up to a key primetime slot, in direct competition with ABC behemoth Lost. That increases the pressure on the TCAP team to deliver ever-meatier content, so they set out to lure ‘a whale’; a high-profile target they believe is to be found in the small town of Murphy, Texas. (The film shot entirely in New Orleans, which also stood in for locations in New York, Connecticut, California and Florida.)

There’s certainly something of the Captain Ahab in Pattinson’s near-gonzo depiction of Hansen as single-mindedly determined to hook his prize no matter the cost, increasingly throwing caution to the wind in the hunt for the perfect shot – and primetime validation. The actor nails the square-jawed charisma of the US TV host, his drawling, affected on-air delivery giving an incongruous gloss to the upsetting text he (too often) reads aloud; snippets of explicit online chats between these cornered men and the children they believed they were speaking with. (Actually, members of the production team, with young-looking adult decoys like Del (Phoebe Bridgers) and Dan (Skyler Gisondo) being used during the filmed stings.)

Pattinson also does a good job of embodying Hansen’s unwavering self-belief that he is doing the right thing, even as he and the show begin to cross some lines. Yet the man remains something of an enigma – despite a heavy-handed, genre-tinged subtext that turns Hansen’s past experiences of reporting on child murder in India into an imagined demon he is determined to vanquish. More impactful is the ever-reliable Weaver as the softly-spoken yet steely Bender, the actress unapologetically embodying the clear-eyed ambition that keeps the character loyal even as she realises that boundaries are beginning to blur.

Also making an impression is Gisondo as ‘Decoy Dave’ (again, a fictional amalgamation), a wannabe 20-something actor cast to play a 13-year-old boy, who finds the gig difficult to handle. It’s a nuanced performance, evoking the emotional tussle between starry-eyed aspiration, shock and disgust – but the film does not go far enough in conveying the genuine trauma experienced by some of those involved with the show, something that Osit’s Predators explores in sensitive detail.

While Primetime uses many of the same techniques as the documentary – split screen, the use of chat transcripts – it has a bold visual identity all its own. Cinematographer David Bolen utilises multiple camera formats (including several from the period) and, although largely shooting digitally, gives the film a grainy, analogue look that befits a time when video was still being used in TV production. In sequences away from the TCAP set, colours are often sickly and heightened, speckled by disorienting lens flare.

Editor Daniel Garber frames the film like a woozy fever dream; jittery editing, the layering of unconnected scenes and flashes of archive footage (although none from TCAP) convey a high-impact, shape-shifting environment of raised stakes and questionable decisions. Ari Balouzian’s classically inflected yet edgy score and Paul Hsu’s intense sound design, which pulls in everything from internet dial-up tones to static feedback, push the film to the brink.

It all builds to a Texas showdown, where – somewhat unbelievably, although completely true – local law enforcement work in tandem with the production to capture their target, DA Bill Conradt (an almost unrecognisable Alex Winter). By this point, Hansen has completely lost his grip, the captain of a ship heading rapidly for the rocks, and Primetime makes its final point with gusto. Yet, underneath all that vim and vigour, the film never quite captures the essence of this troubled production, nor gets a real handle on its multi-faceted host.