Deion Sanders does NOT appear in this movie. (CREDIT: A24)
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher, Bokeem Woodbine, Anna Faris, Jonathan Lipnicki, Tony Revolori, Alex Winter, Eric Rahill, Sean Bridgers, Jeff Zucker, Creed Bratton, Caroline Hebert, Jessica Hecht
Director: Lance Oppenheim
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Rating: R for Some Graphic Nudity, Violence, and Language, All Within the Milieu of a Disturbingly Graphic Premise
Release Date: September 25, 2026 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: It’s the mid-aughts, and Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) is dead-set on making television history. His NBC true crime reality show To Catch a Predator is a bit of a phenomenon, but it’s also controversial, not to mention stressful for everyone involved. His producer Andie (Merritt Wever) remains steely while working around Chris’s mercurial nature, and everyone else on the crew makes their own compromises to survive a show whose premise is luring into sting operations men who are trying to have sex with minors. Emerging into this scenario is aspiring actor Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo), who’s hired to play decoy underage boys in the stings. He just wants to kickstart his showbiz career, but he clearly hasn’t fully registered what he’s signed up for. Indeed, with Chris as the increasingly obsessive ringleader, a looming disaster threatens to become more and more inevitable.
What Made an Impression?: The Impression That I Get: The main attraction in Primetime is of course Pattinson’s compelling performance, which feels like an alien pretending to be a human, or maybe a human purposefully trying to be off by acting like an alien pretending to be a human. And yet, he clearly wants to be authoritative, so it doesn’t make sense for him to be so off like that. I’ve never watched a full episode of To Catch a Predator, so I’ve only caught the real Hansen in bits and glances. But no matter what your familiarity with the Real McCoy, this is still a fascinating feature-length case study of “What’s this guy’s deal?” (Just as compelling is one scene when Gisondo impersonates Pattinson as Dan finds himself slipping into Chris’s persona.)
Caught in the Maelstrom: Director Lance Oppenheim was definitely happy to put his auteurial stamp on this effort. He leans into the harshest visual aspects of the technology of the era, favoring close-ups of AIM chats and hidden camera feeds, as well as the reflections on the faces of the characters poring over those screens. There’s also a recurring motif of a web of a red laser-like display. It all combines to create the effect that the TCaP tean is caught in their own personal Twilight Zone, an aberration within an aberration of Hollyweird.
Way Back Yesterday: You know you’re starting to get old when 20 years ago feels like a completely different era. But part of the fun of Primetime is that we get to revisit the messiness of the 2000s with a fresh set of peepers. It’s certainly a hoot to see former NBC President and CEO Jeff Zucker as himself sorting out where To Catch a Predator belongs on his network’s schedule. That moment also hits so sweetly because it’s nice to encounter someone who has a sense of humor about himself, which is decidedly not the case with Hansen and his cohorts. And let’s not let go of that levity, because this movie ultimately delivers us to a pretty dark place and leaves us to our own devices to figure out what to do with that.
Primetime is Recommended If You Like: To Catch a Predator but feel conflicted about that
Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Stings
