‘Primetime’ review: Robert Pattinson and Phoebe Bridgers team up | #childpredator | #kidsaftey | #childsaftey

Robert Pattinson has had a superb year playing untrustworthy men. He was funny and slightly pathetic as cheating Charlie opposite Zendaya in The Drama, played deliciously slimey antagonist Antinous in The Odyssey and, in Primetime, stars as American TV journalist Chris Hansen in what might be his most provocative outing yet.

Set in 2006, Primetime follows Hansen through the early years of hosting successful reality TV show To Catch A Predator. The team, led by ace producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), set up fake online accounts and pretend to be children in order to lure suspected paedophiles into a real-life trap. Each episode concludes with a meeting between one of the adult decoys and the person they have entrapped. During this encounter, filmed with hidden cameras, Hansen walks into the frame and reveals that the whole thing has been set up for television before the police get involved. It’s Punk’d with a prison sentence.

Hansen’s production team may not be as vile as the predators they catch but they’re still a sleazy bunch happily working in a web of exploitation. They never openly discuss the morality of fitting people up in the way they do or question their role as televisual vigilantes. Meanwhile, married Hansen is cheating on his news anchor wife with a younger woman. Making it worse, tabloid magazine The National Enquirer has found out and is now hounding him with nightly calls for a quote. The grubby coercion and messy private lives dovetail grimily into the main event: the making of a pretty sordid TV programme.

One of the ugliest but also most interesting aspects of the story is the role of the decoys. Phoebe Bridgers plays Del, the most experienced, who can pass as boy or girl. Bridgers is convincing despite only brief screen time but even better is Skyler Gisondo (Licorice Pizza). He excels as the wannabe actor Dan Plumb, who Hansen and co groom into being a believable pubescent. It’s just another clever element revealing how every character’s existence is based around expert manipulation.

Pattinson’s take on Hansen is a queasy mix of oily and chilling, bolstered by a weird rhythm and tone of voice that sounds like an alien learning to be a slick professional TV host. Coupled with his repeated recital of strange, poisonous questions his team use to sucker in their prey, it creates a hypnotic but simultaneously horrifying effect.

Lance Oppenheim and writer Ajon Singh have creatively adapted a 2009 Esquire article about Hansen into a smartly acted and queasily effective drama. It’s also to cinematographer David Bolen’s credit that he’s created an arresting neon-headache aesthetic, making the film look like it comes from the nasty days of early digital experimentation. A tricky uncomfortable story, Primetime is unsettling but worth the effort.