Primetime Turns A True-Crime Tragedy Into A Surreal Horror Show
Robert Pattinson is a revelation as a distorted, grotesque interpretation of To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen.
“I will undress you, and you will undress me.”
It’s the first words we hear Robert Pattinson’s Chris Hansen utter in Primetime, Lance Oppenheim’s surreal new psychological thriller inspired by the tragedy that brought an end to Dateline’s To Catch a Predator reality series. He says it once, his lips exaggerating every syllable as if he’s feeling out how it sits in his mouth. Then he says it again, putting emphasis on different syllables. Then again. He repeats it so much, hunched over a bathroom mirror, that it starts to sound like a vocal warm-up for an actor about to go onstage. Or like a prayer.
It turns out to be a little bit of both: as a frantic production crew hurries to get into their places in a cavernous suburban house where their “decoy” actor (Phoebe Bridgers) waits to greet a predator (Tony Revolori), Pattinson’s Hansen stands behind a curtain, muttering those words under his breath. And when the predator is alone, he emerges, throwing open the curtain as if he’s entering a stage, finally saying those words he’s been chanting so fervently: “I will undress you, and you will undress me.” He’s just reading aloud the chat logs between this predator and who the predator thought was a 13-year-old girl, but it feels like a declaration on the part of the movie too: Hansen will unmask these predators, and Primetime, in turn, will peel back the mask of Chris Hansen.
But what if, underneath the even-keeled temperament and affable showmanship, there was nothing? As Primetime takes a hard left turn from a heightened media satire into much more surreal, unnerving territory, Pattinson’s increasingly uncanny performance takes on a ghoulish life of its own. It results in a movie that’s more true-blue horror than true-crime thriller, one that feels like a bizarro reflection back on us and the pop culture landscape that turned To Catch A Predator into an entertainment sensation.
Penned by Ajon Singh, Primetime is based on the 2007 Esquire article "Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die,” which detailed the botched sting operation that culminated in the suicide of a district attorney and the resulting blowback that led to To Catch a Predator’s cancellation. Much of the movie builds to this explosive climax, kicking things off when To Catch a Predator, Dateline’s grimy little spinoff that could, gets promoted to primetime, opposite ABC’s mega-smash Lost. “We’re going to be bigger than Lost!” Hansen exclaims to his producer, Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), a ruthless ratings shark who sees this as an opportunity for To Catch a Predator to finally nail itself a “whale,” and not the “bottom feeders” that they’ve been catching up to this point. As Andie and Predator’s resident online vigilante, Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher), start to butt heads over the direction of the show, the crew gains a new decoy in upstart actor Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo), who signs onto the show hoping to add to his acting reel.
But things take a turn for the unsettling once Hansen gets a taste of greater fame — and when one of his illicit affairs gets caught by a national tabloid. Terrified that he’s going to lose his reputation, Hansen joins in the push for the show’s proverbial “whale” — a predator so prolific that everyone will have to take the show seriously (and forget about whatever tabloid stories are published about him). As the crew pursues their whale, Hansen begins to spiral further into madness, until his visions of an “ancient evil” begin to bleed over into his reality.
Chris Hansen circles his predator (or his prey).
Despite its horror flair, Primetime starts out much funnier than one would expect. The bulk of that humor comes from Pattinson’s performance, which is both uncanny and totally magnetic. There’s something of Christian Bale in American Psycho in his performance: charming and showy, but empty behind the eyes. But he also feels like an alien wearing an ill-fitting human suit: he draws out his syllables, saying some words the way no human has ever said them, or spitting toothpaste out in the most psychotic way possible. And it’s clear that he’s never done putting on a show — whether it be for his producer, the decoy he takes under his wing, or even his own family.
With its dark, high-saturation cinematography, courtesy of DP David Bolen, Primetime draws inevitable comparisons to like-minded thrillers like Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, but the film plays out more like a 21st-century version of Network — all heightened absurdity and cartoonish media satire. It’s a high-wire tonal balancing act that Oppenheim deftly manages with his docufiction approach, intercutting archival reality TV and news footage with his increasingly dark fictional drama of Pattinson’s Hansen spiralling deeper and deeper.
But it’s when Oppenheim abandons that docufiction approach — and any semblance of reality — that Primetime feels like it starts to operate on another level. Its touches of surrealism start to grow into a fever pitch, and Hansen’s grasp on real life begins to blur altogether. He becomes the mad Captain Ahab chasing his whale, taking his crew with him. Who cares if they all drown? At least they did it on national TV.
