Primetime
A24’s Gripping True-Crime Drama Primetime Is Worth the Hype
Writer: Anya Duncan
With a mesmerising central performance, a wonderfully assured pace and all the hallmarks of an A24 production, Primetime was my most anticipated film at this year’s film festival.
Thankfully, it did not disappoint.
This definitely feels like a traditional A24 film. Throughout Primetime, I was struck by that distinct A24 sensibility, an elusive quality that has remained frustratingly difficult to experience in UK cinemas due to the production company’s release strategy. There's a confidence to the filmmaking, a willingness to let uncomfortable ideas simmer beneath the surface without necessarily spelling them out. Yet, for all its thematic ambition, the film never forgets to entertain.
And entertain it does.
Primetime is quick. The pacing is brilliant, and I don't think we linger too long on any one development. There's a real sense of forward momentum, with the film moving between its public spectacle and the private lives of those behind it before either has the chance to become tiresome.
Based on the world of To Catch a Predator, the film follows Chris Hansen and the people involved in the controversial television programme, which sought to expose men pursuing underage children through hidden-camera stings. It's a premise that practically begs for moral interrogation. What happens when the pursuit of justice becomes entertainment? When the distinction between the two begins to disappear?
Curiously, Primetime seems very uninterested in answering these questions.
We see remarkably little of Hansen's public and private life. Instead, during the first act, we spend a surprising amount of time with a decoy hired for the show, Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo). I found myself wondering whether this was intentional. Perhaps the film isn't particularly interested in Chris Hansen as an individual, but rather in the machine he helped create.
Much of the story unfolds from Hansen's perspective. He genuinely appears to believe that what he's doing amounts to moral justice. Early in the film, when a fan on a plane asks whether he's ever considered using violence against the predators he exposes, his response is chillingly confident: "What I do is worse."
Whether that's true is another question. Publicly, at least, Hansen seems convinced that he's punishing these men adequately, delivering a form of justice that the prosecution system around him has failed to enact. Often he speaks about his time in India, investigating missing children, and repeatedly frames the programme as a battle against something ancient and deeply embedded within society. Whenever someone questions why NBC is producing the show, he insists they're fighting an ancient evil.
It's more than television. Or, at least, that's what he wants to believe.
But there's a contradiction here: Hansen is simultaneously preoccupied with public perception, ratings and the show's success. His moral crusade is also a television product, and television products need audiences.
I would go as far as suggesting that the film suggests bringing To Catch a Predator into the network’s “primetime slot” was precisely what began to undermine its original purpose. What started as a form of moral exposure gradually became a programme chasing viewership, with the spectacle threatening to eclipse the justice it claimed to serve.
One of the things I appreciated most about Primetime was how naturally I settled into it. I've seen several films at this festival, but few have felt as immediately assured. Perhaps that's simply my familiarity with the A24 style, but I think it has more to do with the confidence of the performances.
The acting feels remarkably natural. Nobody seems to be performing for the sake of the camera, and the characters inhabit their world with an ease that makes the film's more uncomfortable moments all the more effective. The show director, Andy, deserves credit for this. The performance from Merritt Wever feels grounded, allowing the story to unfold without unnecessary theatricality.
Pattinson’s Chris Hansen is also extraordinary. He continues to demonstrate why he's so much more than the sum of his previous roles. There's a subtlety to his performance that makes the character feel like a person rather than a vehicle for the film's broader arguments. He doesn't need to announce his intentions for us to understand them, and that restraint is precisely what makes his work so compelling. At times his line delivery was hilariously accurate; throughout the film, I found a lot of pleasure watching him navigate the moral shortfalls of Hansen in increasingly subtle movements.
Overall, Primetime’s pacing is excellent, its performances feel authentic, and its visual texture captures its period beautifully. More importantly, it understands that the story of To Catch a Predator is about more than catching criminals. It's about the machinery of public outrage, the seductive power of moral certainty and the moment justice becomes indistinguishable from entertainment.
But I do wish the film had been braver.
For all its suggestions about the corrupting influence of television, the film seems reluctant to form a definitive opinion on the morality of the programme itself. Perhaps that ambiguity is deliberate. Perhaps the audience is supposed to decide where the line lies.
To me, this is a weak stance for a film like this to take.
I wanted Primetime to push harder, to commit to its own questions rather than leave them hanging in the air. While I greatly enjoyed my time with this film, I cannot help but feel somewhat cheated out of a definitive perspective from Lance Oppenheim about this controversial television staple.
