Primetime
One of the things I noticed happening among people who seemed to be pretty consistent progressives when the Epstein files were being released in early 2026 was how many seemed to be sprinting towards QAnon-esque conspiracy theories. There is plenty that is horrific, and known, about Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophilic operation that diving head first into the realm of conspiracy theory is unproductive to the desire to bring the people at the heart of Epstein’s web to justice. During one particular moment in “Primetime,” we get an idea of what drives Chris Hansen in his “gotcha journalism” intent to capture online pedophiles on camera, so they can be arrested, and while I’m sure there’s some truth to it, there’s also a sense that Hansen’s brain is rotted so much by fantasy of the horrors that his obsession will consume him from the inside out. By the final frames of Lance Oppenheim’s film, it has done just that, and there’s no coming back from where it lead the people involved.
Robert Pattinson is a fascinating screen presence. If you were to solely base your view of him off of “Goblet of Fire” and the “Twilight” films, you’d never imagine he would become one of the most versatile and gonzo actors working today. But every performance has a level of fascination to it that builds a compelling look at humanity from the fringes of morality. Just this year alone, we’ve seen someone who manipulates his way into meeting a woman, and then unable to face a past decision she came close to doing (“The Drama”), and a classical mustache-twirling villain who plays the leader, but is ultimately a coward (“The Odyssey”). Pattinson’s Chris Hansen is a lecherous human being who is consumed by fame, and obsessed with his twisted ideas of justice, especially if he is front and center. He so wants to be seen as a serious reporter, but let’s face it- people like Hansen are more interested in their celebrity than the crimes that they “report” on.
Early on in the film, Hansen and his producer, Andie Bender (the terrific Merritt Wever), are in a meeting with someone from programming at NBC. The “Dateline” segment that Hansen has built his reputation on- catfishing men looking for underage sexual encounters online- has been wildly popular, and they want to turn it into its own series. The result was “To Catch a Predator,” which plays less like investigative journalism and more like reality TV the more we think about it. It’s wild to think that this could even be a long-running series of investigations, let alone a TV series, given its premise. I get that we’re not dealing with the most intelligent people in society when it comes to pedophiles, but you would think that the “decoys” Hansen utilized for the filmed segments would be known to them due to other episodes or TV spots. One of the primary decoys in “Primetime” is Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo, in his best work to date), a young actor who’s trying to get his SAG card. At first, he views his appearances on “To Catch a Predator” as an acting gig, but as he gets sucked into Hansen’s worldview, he starts to lose sight of that, and finds himself uneasy about what he’s being asked to do. The film isn’t a straight line narrative about the entire breadth of the series; it seems to condense the story where we go from the start of the standalone narrative to its final, tragic moment, where the attempts to catch a “Whale” in Texas led to the suicide of a District Attorney during a siege. Ambition took the lead over ethics, but how ethical was the series to begin with?
Ajon Singh’s screenplay- adapted from an article by Luke Dittrich- does a great job of telling the story in a clear cut manner where we see how each of the main characters get caught in Hansen’s trap, even if they are not the target. That includes Hansen himself, whose self-aggrandizing ego leads to his own personal downfall, especially when the National Enquirer gets a lead on an extramarital affair he’s having with a woman. One clue of Hansen’s personal depravity is when we see him showing his two kids spots for the show, while telling his wife (Anna Faris) they just happened to walk in. Oppenheim’s film isn’t quite as biting as other media satires, but he and Pattinson are definitely on the same wavelength with how they want to look at Chris Hansen, and the result is bleak, and darkly funny.
