Robert Pattinson was born to play Chris Hansen. In the opening shot of Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime—the documentary savant’s first foray into fiction, this one based on a true story—we immediately see the popular To Catch a Predator host as the menace Oppenheim and first-time screenwriter Ajon Singh want us to understand him as. He’s cast in a devilish red light, swallowed by shadow, displayed through an eerie mini-DV grain, and reciting the lines “I will undress you and you will undress me” over and over in Hansen’s trademark brassy, rehearsed, does-he-really-sound-like-that (yes, he does) tone. The chilling music of the haunted fairytale score glitches in and out while children’s-show chimes ring ominously.
Pattinson can do it all, but the past year has made it increasingly evident that he has a sixth sense for villainy: his vile suitor in The Odyssey; his cold, banal future husband in The Drama; his genetically engineered, shapeshifting evil in the upcoming Dune: Part Three; and the shamelessly vile Chris Hansen, whose every motivation is depicted as selfish, self-aggrandizing, or both, and almost always at the cost of others. Even when he apologizes to his wife, falling to his knees to admit to everything she’s accused him of, there’s a self-adulating performance to it all, as if he’s doing it for the hidden cameras that make up the visual DNA of his Dateline NBC show, i.e. his fast track to success.
Singh adapted the riveting screenplay from Luke Dittrich’s 2007 Esquire article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die,” which should remain unread for anyone who wants the film’s final act to remain a mystery. The plot is straightforward: we watch Hansen, his lead producer Andie, and his small crew get the questionable (and, at first, maligned) show off the ground, face trials in the process, find an audience, get moved to primetime to compete with Lost (“We’re gonna be bigger than Lost!” Hansen screams through gritted teeth, fists clinched and drunk on power), and grind toward a future as luminous as David Bolen’s radiant cinematography, only to hit a brick wall.
Bolen’s striking work is a brilliant blend of buzzy mini-DV and TV-screen visuals and a soft-edged, fantastically colored (thanks to colorist Damien Vandercruyssen) glow of modern-cinema aesthetics. That lucent glow is a look Bolen and Oppenheim have been shaping and bettering with every project since 2020’s Some Kind of Heaven, with 2024’s Spermworld carrying the closest look to what would end up in Primetime. The vivid aesthetic is so transfixing it turns us into moths that are all but flying into the lamp of the screen. It’s a perfect fit for a film about compulsive viewing tendencies. And it heightens and beautifies what would otherwise be dull, mundane sets. Take, for example, a motel sequence. We all know what a motel looks like, but under the lighting direction of Bolen, Oppenheim’s vision, and production designer Alex DiGerlando’s creative execution, it’s a sight to behold.
Primetime follows a recent wave of re-obsession with Hansen’s controversial series (see: Predators), which began as a single segment on Dateline in November 2004, returned for its second episode in November 2005, and launched into its own regular series on primetime TV in 2006, when Oppenheim’s movie takes place, before it was cancelled after its second season the following year (you’ll know why after you see the film). The series still occupies a sensationalist, what-the-fuck-am-I-watching zone of entertainment in a way that could always re-capture curious contemporary viewers, but that hasn’t happened… yet. It’s re-entered the spotlight because collective memory and conscience has all but dropped the hammer on the show as an impudent, unethical social experiment akin to Precrime in Minority Report, in which someone who was obviously planning on doing something awful didn’t end up doing it. And, in this case, they were actively baited into the scenario, which was operated with the oversight of executives who merely wanted more eyeballs on their network.
As if Pattinson and the history involved aren’t reason enough to watch Primetime, the ensemble cast is nearly flawless. Merritt Wever, who produces the show with an iron fist and utter lack of empathy, delivers scary, seismic work with incessant gum-smacking authority. Matthew Maher walks the line of seedy crewmember and creep-who-hunts-creeps like a tightrope, never allowing you to trust him or write him off. Phoebe Bridgers plays the show’s original lone actor (who can disguise herself and her voice as a young girl or boy) with a cool, comedic bent, as if she knows we’ll all be in on the joke of America’s Sad Indie Songstress playing a pedophile decoy. Tony Revolori is hauntingly pathetic as the show’s first culprit. Bokeem Woodbine is gutbusting in his militant intention to rid his small Texas town of perps. Even Anna Faris is great in her single scene as Hansen’s wife, in which she mostly just stares at Chris with varying visages of disappointment and incredulity.
The real performance hoorah, however, belongs to Skyler Gisondo, who’s been largely absent from live-action film and TV since his hysterical Spanish-speaking stint in Licorice Pizza. Gisondo has such palpable chops and alluring confidence in everything (and he’s been in a lot since he started acting in 2003 at the age of seven) that it’s a surprise no one has given him a film opportunity this meaty until now. Basically the co-lead to Pattinson’s lead, Gisondo plays Dan Plumb, a new decoy actor (very inspired by Billy Bob Thornton’s portrayal of Sling Blade) who is at first traumatized but slowly and surely starts to understand himself and his future through the lens of the show (“Nubile, hairless boy-man…that’s your lane.”). It’s an exploratory performance laden with devastation and complex emotion as much as light humor, dark comedy, existential revelation, and muddy water as far as the eye can see.
To Oppenheim and Singh’s credit, Gisondo’s character shows how someone like Plumb could prepare for the show, still be wholly uninformed of what’s going on when he shows up, be mentally abused by its creators, and still have adulation for them and passion for the show. Through Plumb, we understand how someone like Hansen ever came to exist. We understand how his values might’ve been shaped and why he placed meaning where he did. Why being “bigger than Lost” on network primetime was worth breaching any depraved or corrupt ground in the name of viewership.
That’s what Oppenheim does best in his first major feature. It’s one thing to find a fascinating story-—much less steeped in real history—as ripe for ripping through as Chris Hansen’s, but it’s another entirely to actually give the viewer insight into something so salacious. Oppenheim’s angle on the TV personality is unflinching. It’s no surprise A24 insisted Hansen sign an uncharacteristically thorough NDA before screening the film for him in August (he refused and left). There’s nothing redeeming here. Hansen is a shark. Yet there’s so much to work with, so much to chew on, so much to unpack in subsequent viewings, both in Hansen and the supporting characters. And, perhaps most importantly, there’s so much to unpack in ourselves as hungry eyes and ears in the entertainment landscape, as part of the masses that movies like Primetime and shows like To Catch a Predator are created for.
We might not be personally responsible for one of the most dishonest and immoral shows to ever fuzz onto TV screens, but there’s a reason why we’re still talking about it in-depth twenty years later. And, if Oppenheim is onto something here, we all have something to do with that.
Primetime premiered at the 2026 Venice Film Festival and will open on September 25.
The post Venice Review: Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime Is a Thrilling Indictment first appeared on The Film Stage.
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