Primetime might ultimately be something of a satirical takedown of the media atmosphere that produced a show like “To Catch a Predator,” but every subjective quality of director Lance Oppenheim’s absurdly heightened pseudo-thriller suggests that it emerged from some blackened and cancerous void in the universe. At a certain point, we realize there’s not much to do but laugh at the lengths to which Oppenheim and screenwriter Ajon Singh have gone to communicate the dread that the movie inspires in us. The film then surpasses that point, and all we can do is stare blankly at the screen, contemplating no less than the portentous end of all that can be counted as civilized.
It takes a particular kind of movie to cause such thoughts to bubble to the surface, but perhaps part of the effect is because David Bolen’s cinematography takes on the qualities of reality television of the early 2000s, when the show in question had taken the country by storm. It would be more accurate to say that Bolen and Oppenheim adopt that visual stratagem for some time in their film, until it no longer resembles anything taking place or set on planet Earth. We occasionally recognize that buildings and houses and the guideline-strict bushes of HOA neighborhoods populate the screen, but we can no longer recognize them as more than phantoms of a world gone wildly, irrevocably astray.
All that remains, at least to show host Chris Hansen of “Dateline NBC,” are the targets of his social experiment writ large—to take some demonic pedophile and ruin them, by any means necessary, on the world stage. He is possessed by this idea, and Robert Pattinson’s thoroughly invested performance, though the actor does not resemble his real-life counterpart all that much, conveys that all-consuming possession. Nothing else, be it his own marriage or his relationship with his showrunner or his consideration of his pair of decoy actors or his obligations to the network that will air his show, matters to Chris Hansen, whose name should probably always be presented as both first and last.
Fittingly, then, there is no outside world to Oppenheim or Singh, who begin with a random case assigned to the show and end on the one that brought the whole program to a permanent standstill. We meet the players aside from Chris Hansen, such as his producer Andie Bender (a fictionalized composite of multiple such producers, played here by Merritt Wever), his partner in investigating these crimes Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher), and aspiring actor Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo), who’s really just looking for the right speaking role to receive his Screen Actors Guild card. We receive a tiny sliver of a glimpse into Chris Hansen’s personal life, with a wife (Anna Faris) and children who seem only vaguely aware of his inconsistent presence in their lives.
Everything about Oppenheim’s approach here is almost intentionally dehumanizing, and that might be why the film is such a disturbing thriller for such a long time. It all occasionally amounts to a 100-minute stress test, because nothing about this entire set-up—the vetting of the “subjects,” the wiring of a staged house, the production of the chat sessions by Xavier on behalf of his company Perverted Justice, the filming of the scenes themselves—is safe or nice or comfortable for anybody. Only Chris Hansen, of “Dateline NBC,” seems to be at ease (or whatever his version of that is) in these places, and that’s only when everything—but also, from a certain perspective, nothing—is going right.
Gradually and subtly, the film’s perspective begins to shift away from Chris Hansen and onto the others in his orbit. That includes Andie, who is being poached by a rival producer (played by Jessica Hecht), and it especially includes Dan, whose supportive circle back home can’t wait to find out what this secretive role (requiring “a lot of improvisation,” as he is initially and exclusively told) is and what his contributions are. What he doesn’t realize is that he’ll be a decoy performer, putting on a childish voice to lure pedophiles into a facade of safety before the show’s host reveals himself from some high-ground perspective (the other one is played by Phoebe Bridgers, whose vaguely androgynous features are put to good use as a performer of both girls and boys).
We see how it all works at the beginning, as an ex-Marine (played by Tony Revolori) falls into the chocolate-chip-cookie trap set by the production, and then it’s off to the races for Dan and his first real target (a sick-minded fetishist, played by Jonathan Lipnicki, whose idea of foreplay is full-frontal). The movie is sometimes overwhelmingly discomforting, and it’s only partly because of the job that Chris Hansen, of “Dateline NBC,” has placed in front of Dan. It’s also because of the host himself, who at one point relays a story that might as well be African folklore to justify his treatment of his television subjects.
The narrative will eventually settle down a bit as Xavier identifies a potential “white whale” in the form of a government official played by Alex Winter. Those with a passing knowledge of the show’s history will likely recall both the place (which is easier for this critic, who lives only half an hour away) and the outcome of this particular case. The movie is a tragedy, after all, even as it retains its sense of both performative and accidental satire (Bokeem Woodbine plays a Sheriff whose surname is about as fitting to his line of work as his ridiculous appearance), and Oppenheim really makes sure that we feel the extent of it (intercutting the punctual end to that case with some internal certainty on Dan’s part).
The result is a movie that understandably seems to be circling a drain, until the recognition that all other potential avenues of justice were bypassed for the pleasure of the chase and the ratings. Pattinson anchors Primetime with his uniquely oddball take on Chris Hansen’s theatricality, but the heart of the movie resides with Gisondo, whose Dan comes to realize the cost of this cutthroat business with soul-crushing results.
Rating: ***½ (out of ****)
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