Key Highlights
- A24’s Primetime reimagines Chris Hansen of To Catch a Predator fame as a fame-obsessed antihero, with Robert Pattinson delivering a chilling, accent-perfect performance directed by Lance Oppenheimer.
- The film dramatizes the 2007 Esquire exposé “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” and the fatal Murphy, Texas sting, featuring a standout ensemble including Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, and Phoebe Bridgers in her acting debut.
- Despite electrifying performances and a haunting first two acts, the review argues the finale retreats into restrained cynicism and disconnected supernatural imagery, ending with a whimper instead of the daring conclusion the material demands.
A Fever Dream of Ambition: Primetime Dissects the Making of a Media Monster
Lance Oppenheimer, the filmmaker soon to collaborate with Nathan Fielder on the Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything, turns his lens on the rise and rot of reality television justice in Primetime. The A24 drama, now in theaters, is based on the 2007 Esquire article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” and plunges viewers into the heyday of To Catch a Predator, the Dateline special report that graduated to a primetime sensation. At its center sits Chris Hansen, once revered for his practiced poise in confronting alleged pedophiles before hidden cameras. As attorney-turned-foe Two-Face said in The Dark Knight, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Primetime posits that Hansen’s villain era has arrived, painting him not as a guardian of justice but as a “fame-hungry monster” willing to sacrifice ethics, relationships, and human lives for ratings dominance over rival Stone Phillips.
Pattinson’s Haunting Metamorphosis Anchors the Horror
Robert Pattinson’s portrayal is the film’s gravitational force. Shedding his signature daffy swagger and English accent entirely, he adopts a stern American anchor tone “eerily in line with the real Hansen’s.” The transformation is clinical and terrifying; when he tells a fretful stranger, “take a seat,” the line triggers a “chilling thrill of recognition” for anyone who witnessed the original broadcasts. The review draws a direct line to Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler and Christian Bale in American Psycho, noting Pattinson taps the dark side of the American Dream but with a distinct, heightened “anchorman intensity”—a “funhouse mirror version, or a TEMU Halloween mask of Hansen.” In one outrageous moment illustrating the total consumption of self by persona, Chris answers his personal cell phone in character, saying intensely, “This is Chris Hansen.” His wife on the other end is flustered “in a way that suggests this is not a one-off. She’s lost her husband to his show, and she knows it.”
An Ensemble of Complicity and Collateral Damage
Surrounding Pattinson is a “terrifically talented cast” elevating material that occasionally veers into archetype. Three-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever plays producer Andie Bender, injecting “surliness and flushes of doubt” into a role that could have been a tedious moral compass; she is simultaneously the voice of reason and an enabler, creating an “electrifying” battle of wills with Pattinson. Matthew Maher revels as the self-righteous internet researcher Xavier Von Erck, while Phoebe Bridgers makes a compelling, gruff acting debut as decoy Del, projecting the “armor demanded by this decoy role” rather than vulnerability. Skyler Gisondo emerges as the film’s “thumping heart” playing Dan Plumb, a thinly veiled version of real-life decoy Dan Schrack. Gisondo translates the “discomfort and terror of being bait” with boyish nervousness, and Oppenheimer wisely lingers on Dan’s perspective during an early sting, leaning into the discomfort rather than playing it solely for dark laughs.
Why This Matters: The Reckoning of Reality TV’s Predatory Era
Primetime arrives amid a critical reassessment of the “predator hunting” genre. Last year’s documentary Predators rigorously re-evaluated To Catch a Predator‘s practices and its inspiration of reckless imitators. Oppenheimer’s film dramatizes the specific inflection point where journalistic enterprise curdled into entertainment spectacle—the move to a demanding primetime slot that pressured the team to engineer ever-more-dramatic “catches,” culminating in the infamous Murphy, Texas operation. That real-life sting resulted in the suicide of a district attorney and the eventual cancellation of the series, a scandal the film recreates. By framing Hansen’s ambition through a horror-thriller lens, Primetime forces audiences to confront the complicity of a viewership that tuned in by the millions to watch “some perverted form of justice play out on TV as armed officers would tackle one suspect after another for our entertainment.” The film questions not just the hunter, but the ecosystem that fed him.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Primetime a direct biopic of Chris Hansen?
- No. While based on the 2007 Esquire article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” and the real events surrounding the Murphy, Texas sting, the film is described as a heightened psychological thriller and horror movie about blind ambition. Pattinson’s performance is a “theatrical interpretation”—a “funhouse mirror version” of Hansen—rather than a strict mimicry. The real Chris Hansen has not seen the film and is reportedly displeased with the depiction.
- Who are the key supporting characters and who plays them?
- The ensemble includes Merritt Wever as producer Andie Bender, Matthew Maher as researcher Xavier Von Erck, Skyler Gisondo as decoy Dan Plumb (based on Dan Schrack), Phoebe Bridgers in her acting debut as decoy Del, Bill Heck as rival anchor Stone Phillips, and Anna Farris as Hansen’s wife.
- What is the main criticism of the film’s ending?
- The review argues the final act “loses its nerve.” Despite building intense dread through Pattinson’s performance, the depiction of the fatal Murphy, Texas climax feels “oddly restrained.” The film abruptly introduces “xenophobic supernatural iconography” and ghostly flair that feels disconnected from the grounded psychological horror preceding it, retreating to a “dully cynical” final scene instead of following the protagonist’s dark trajectory to a more damning, daring conclusion.
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