Dazzling Performances Make Primetime Worth Taking a Seat For
For anyone who treated To Catch a Predator like appointment television, watching Primetime is a surreal experience. Documentarian Lance Oppenheim (Some Kind of Heaven) makes his narrative feature-length debut with this disquieting docudrama, and those buying a ticket should not anticipate an incisive, thought-provoking biopic of journalist Chris Hansen or of the zeitgeist news program he was the steely host of. This is not that film.
What Oppenheim’s stunningly well-made and magnificently acted opus does do will likely leave as many viewers puzzled and vexed as it does cause others to sit in the theater stunned and stewing in their silent horror. This is a glossy, purposively surface-level examination of the birth of tabloid “infotainment,” a reality television scourge that has only grown more pervasive, and even less authentic, over the past two decades than it was in 2006. Oppenheim creates a veneer of psychedelic, psychotronic venality that’s as distasteful as it is fascinating. This is the type of movie you want to take an immediate shower after it ends.
The blown-out colors, the pixelated hi-def digital images, these are all designed to leave audiences sitting on the edge of tense discombobulation before ultimately sending them into the street trying to determine what they’ve spent 110 minutes sitting in the darkness witnessing. This grainy assault on the senses — director of photography David Bolen (Thelma) and editor Daniel Garber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) each deserve a standing ovation — does not seem to care if any of its questions receive closure. It’s the asking of them that seems to excite Oppenheim, and like a gotcha journalist who cares more about the shock value of stating these queries aloud than anything else, the unspoken answers still linger in the ether like a forgotten afterthought never to be resolved.
But unlike last year’s superb documentary Predators about To Catch a Predator, its importance, and its sordid unintended legacy, there is no deeper insight lurking beneath the surface of Primetime that helps anyone understand why the program changed television news infotainment forever. Oppenheim’s drama is all about sensation — and sensationalism — more than it is about anything consequential. It’s hard to say if this is due to the director’s insistence on creating an atmosphere of distrust and subterfuge or if it is a byproduct of Ajon Singh’s screenplay. Either way, there’s precious little underneath the hood other than dazzling performances and an omnipresent sensation of impending doom, and I found that frustrating.
Is this a case of style over substance? Potentially, but I need more time (and probably another viewing or two) to decide what my feelings are on that front. What I am certain of is that there will be few other features that I watch in 2026 that will contain three performances as hypnotically masterful as the ones turned in by stars Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, and Skyler Gisondo. All three are spectacular.
Wever portrays Andie Bender, the fearless and intelligent producer of To Catch a Predator, and when NBC gives the show a coveted time slot going up against ABC juggernaut Lost, she’s determined to do whatever is necessary for her news program to be victorious in the ratings. Gisondo is Dan Plumb, a twenty-something actor who is employed as a 13-year-old looking “decoy” used to help capture the child predators the show is designed to publicly expose. Both actors give alive, emotionally lithe performances that mine internalized depths the script frustratingly only hints at. It’s the best work of both of their careers.
Then there is Pattinson. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. This is a confident, dangerously anxious portrait of psychological dexterity that’s chockfull of constant, invigorating surprise. Pattinson doesn’t so much try to copy Chris Hansen’s familiar mannerisms and vocal inflections as he takes them to an eccentrically frenzied plateau that’s borderline dizzying. The actor is a metaphorical Icarus, and he’s flying so close to the sun the only mystery is when he’s going to get burned, not if. If any movie deserves to be seen specifically for an all-time great performance, this one fits the bill.
Because Pattinson, Wever, and Gisondo are so outstanding (as is the support they get from Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher, Tony Revolori, Bokeem Woodbine, Anna Faris, and an unrecognizable Alex Winter), I’m understandably annoyed that Oppenheim’s opus doesn’t dig deeper than it does. But the filmmaking is exceptional, and, as already mentioned, those performances are exhilarating. Couple all of that with the omnipresent sensation of overwhelming abhorrent dread that permeates through every digitally augmented fiber of this thriller’s DNA, and there’s simply no way this peculiar, one-of-a-kind motion picture can be casually dismissed.
To paraphrase Hansen himself, so why not take a seat right over there? Even with all my misgivings, I’m glad I did; the uncomfortable shudders I had sitting through Primetime not about to vanish anytime soon.
– Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)
