Primetime (Lance Oppenheim, 2026)

[brundlefly]

Primetime, from doc-maker Lance Oppenheim (Some Kind of Heaven, Ren Faire). Robert Pattinson as Dateline's Chris Hansen. With Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Bokeem Woodbine, Sean and Phoebe Bridgers (no relation).

[Mr Sausage]

Primetime, in which the making of the show To Catch a Predator is turned into a pulse pounding thriller of all things.

[Matt]

Surprised to see not a single sentence of discussion about Primetime, but maybe it's only Extremely My Kind of Thing and not anybody else's. Pattinson is always good at playing weird little guys, and he's doing that again here in a fun way. Nick Shager of The Daily Beast sums up my thoughts perfectly by saying "There isn’t a single moment when Pattinson’s Hansen resembles a real-life human being," and specifically cites his accent, mannered speech, deliberate movements, unhinged glares, and affected smiles. Oppenheim described his character as a combination of Jerry Maguire and Dracula. He's great. But to me this is really a three-hander with Merritt Wever and Skyler Gisondo (whose character is heartbreaking but ultimately not exactly blameless).

There doesn't seem to be a center of the film. It's more a melange of dark themes and unprincipled characters circling the sucking drain of network television, not unlike Network. To me, that's not a negative, but I can see it being a problem for that segment of the audience that dislikes any sort of moral ambiguity or plot that's not spoon fed to them. It was a lot funnier than I expected, with quite a few blink-and-you-miss-them sight gags and cultural references. And high marks for casting real-life network TV villain Jeff Zucker as himself!

It's marvelous filmmaking, shot largely in extreme close-ups in various video formats with saturated color, expressionistic lighting, effective score, and precise editing. It reminds me of the Safdies' work without the relentless adrenaline. Maybe close in style and tone to The Smashing Machine, but better.

Spoiler

This is not exactly a spoiler, more something that is best discovered in watching the film, but I do love it when movies are subtextually about acting. Both Pattinson and Gisondo have scenes in the film where you see their characters rehearsing lines over and over, trying to find exactly the right "Chris Hansen" and "Decoy Dan." And besides Hansen essentially being a character portrayed by Chris Hansen, you get a couple of moments where Wever and Gisondo's characters both adopt Hansen's mannerisms and speaking style in order to get something they want. Just really great work from every actor involved. I really hope Gisondo in particular gets some kind of awards recognition.

[bearcuborg]

Lance Oppenheim is quickly becoming one of my favourite filmmakers and I'm yet to see a single film from him!

I hope his documentaries are better than his feature film debut, because Primetime cinematically fails in just about every way possible.

Surprised to see not a single sentence of discussion about Primetime, but maybe it's only Extremely My Kind of Thing and not anybody else's.

Well, this isn't something I ever expected to bring up here, but I'm a die hard TCAPist. I loved the show from its original network run, to MSNBC reruns, and especially in its resurgence during the glorious years of JustinTV (streaming/with running chat commentary). TCAP now lives on in various weirdo forms ranging from forums (Temple of TCAP), sub Reddits, and hilarious contributions on Youtube that include commentaries (Walls) and phony phone calls (Candidfelow).

I love TCAP so much that I once bid as much as $5,000 a few years ago to work on a sting with Chris Hansen. I love that Chris doesn't see that he sold out a semblance of journalistic integrity for ratings. He's a bit of a creep, but he's my creep. Hansen's reputation will be fine - or will at least remain as is... Last year's documentary, Predators, gave it to him much worse.

Pattinson is what matters most in this movie, and for the most part he's fine, and as Matt noted in his not-so-spoiler section, he's best when he's perfecting his line readings for the broadcast. If the movie centered on that earlier we might have had something. Instead he's a creep from beginning to end. Perhaps if he had a better director, this movie could have been framed better - but maybe not, because the script gives us nothing to care about it... Merritt Wever is your token tv producer, in that she's only ever pure television. Newcomer Skyler Gisondo is played in such a naive way that by the time he feels any guilt for taking part in a predator's suicide, it's more because the story tells us this event has affected him, but I was left unpersuaded by whatever critique this film attempts to make about the show.

The score is shooting for a drama thriller vibe...but it too is as overwrought as the direction. For all of the effort that went into achieving the visual look - it comes off as hollow as the movie, or Chris Hansen himself. I did laugh a few times...and one wonders if someone with a better sense of humor helmed this project it could have really been something.

[therewillbeblus]

Pattinson is what matters most in this movie, and for the most part he's fine, and as Matt noted in his not-so-spoiler section, he's best when he's perfecting his line readings for the broadcast. If the movie centered on that earlier we might have had something. Instead he's a creep from beginning to end. Perhaps if he had a better director, this movie could have been framed better - but maybe not, because the script gives us nothing to care about it... Merritt Wever is your token tv producer, in that she's only ever pure television. Newcomer Skyler Gisondo is played in such a naive way that by the time he feels any guilt for taking part in a predator's suicide, it's more because the story tells this event has affected him. I was left unpersuaded by whatever critique this film attempts to make.

The score is shooting for a drama thriller vibe...but it too is as overwrought as the direction. For all of the effort that went into achieving the visual look - it comes off as hollow as the movie, or Chris Hansen himself. I did laugh a few times...and one wonders if someone with a better sense of humor helmed this project it could have really been something.

I also found Primetime darkly comic and it's wonderful when it is, but doesn't sustain that, or any tone for its runtime. The film is all over the place. Pattinson nails the part, though he’s not compelling enough to carry it on its own, which the film understands, and instead splits its time between three leads. Which is fine, but the others aren't very interesting as characters, even if Merritt Wever does her best to rival Pattinson's perf (and succeeds). I didn't quite know what the film was trying to do either. It's pointing at a bunch of different ideas - people as performers, justice vs self-importance, the morality of what they're doing in general... but the film just grazes these ideas. It doesn't need to decide on a judgment, but the principals behind the project could've gotten a little deeper into what they're trying to explore. I liked the film overall, but as a lark of black comedy

[mfunk9786]

I took this film as a reminder that we're all capable of doing something evil if we're coerced enough/properly. Certainly the targets of these stings were coerced in a way they never would have been were they chatting with an actual child... day and night, they were being goaded into coming over to a house by an adult man and/or a decoy. Not saying they were innocent people; most would be well-adjusted enough not to take that kind of bait, or more to the point, not to want to take that kind of bait. But they were often dim and lonely men, and were honey-potted not completely dissimilarly to the way the male decoy in this film was falsely led to believe he was doing something noble that would help advance his career, prove him to be of superior morality to his peers, and make him part of some kind of superhero brigade. What we see depicted in the film is a man (Hansen) who, for whatever reason, becomes convinced that he is a key cog in stopping a very real evil by getting enough eyeballs on it, and ends up pulled in by the same evil in another form.

It's almost like shingles: we all have it living somewhere inside of us, and either we live fully virtuous lives from birth to death, or it comes out and reveals itself in a wide variety of ways. "Evil" being a nebulous concept at best, it is still something we are universally capable of and that most people understand when they see it.

It also has some knockout cinematography and performances. I think all of the above is plenty for me to declare it very successful in its aims, even if it never takes a swing at trying to tell us whether we should think Hansen/the show are All Good or All Bad... one of my favorite movies of 2026 thus far.