Primetime (2026)
Last year's Predators, a documentary about the famous—and infamous—hit TV show To Catch a Predator, was one of the best films of the year. It was a thoughtful look at what the show's host Chris Hansen claimed to be accomplishing versus what it actually did—most of the people on the show could not be prosecuted because the show's footage was inadmissible in court. It asked thoughtful questions about the human appetite for public humiliation and why criminal justice and mass entertainment should not intersect. Director Lance Oppenheim has now made a fictionalized version of this story in Primetime. Sadly, it does not measure up to the documentary.
It may be unfair to compare the two. Oppenheim's film seems like it wants to be a media satire than anything else. Robert Pattinson plays Hansen here, and while he does Hansen's mannerisms and speech patterns well, it almost seems like he's channeling a bit of Christian Bale in American Psycho. He comes off like an attention-crazed narcissist from the get-go. There's no real arc for him.
Oppenheim's film does better when focusing on the story of Dan (Skyler Gisondo), an aspiring actor who signs on to play a "decoy." This means he's an early-20s guy playing underage teens on the show. Dan thinks it will be a stepping stone to get a SAG card but he soon finds himself struggling to adjust both to the icky come-ons from the show's targets and to witnessing a series of men's lives essentially end in worldwide humiliation on TV.
Hansen
himself has been a vocal critic of the film—but is likely helping drum up
publicity for it by talking about it so much—calling it a "fever dream."
Stylistically, that it was it feels like. Oppenheim's visual style calls to
mind late-period Tony Scott or '90s Oliver Stone. Primetime is not a
dull or a bland film, but it's one that feels shallow, especially compared to
the documentary that preceded it.
