Can we destroy evil? And, if we can, what gives us the right? “Primetime,” directed by Lance Oppenheim and released in theaters on Sept. 25, asks these questions poignantly and aggressively. The film follows the events of the hit reality TV show “To Catch a Predator” and how the move to a new, prime cable timeslot pushed its eccentric creator and lead, Chris Hansen, to his limits. “Primetime” as a project is a must-watch for anyone who has been immersed, voluntarily or by force, in the recent cultural conversations around surveillance and intrinsic evil, along with the pervasive aesthetic movement that has been Y2K.
Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson), the head of the show “To Catch a Predator,” embarks on a mission to catch a “white whale” of an online predator after NBC moves the show to the coveted Wednesday night prime-time airing slot. If you don’t know, “To Catch a Predator” was a show where Hansen would lure online predators looking for relations with minors to fake homes where he would confront them before siccing the police on them. He was joined by decoys, actors he recruited to finish luring in predators once his team had set the trap through online message boards. Simultaneously, at the time of his hunt for this “white whale” in the film, Hansen tries to avoid the consequences of an extramarital affair.
Pattinson as Hansen is intense in all the right ways. He brings the character alive with a jittery and on-edge approach in both voice and body language, making it appear that, at any given moment, his skeleton could burst out of his body. Pattinson seemingly pokes at the idea that Hansen is some alien creature wearing human skin with his jerky movements, soulless gaze and monologues to himself in front of mirrors. But the performance never fully crosses that line, leaving the audience on the edge of their seats watching this unpredictable man’s soul sprawled out across the silver screen in an uncanny valley. His performance is the crown jewel of this film, and everything else builds out of it. The pure intensity and raw emotion Oppenheim evokes throughout “Primetime” could not work without Pattinson’s dedication to the role.
Other notable performances include Skyler Gisondo as the awkward actor Dan Plum—brought on by Hansen as “Decoy Dan”—and musician Phoebe Bridgers as fellow predator decoy Del Harvey. Gisondo and Bridgers illustrate the discomforting nature of an adult actor pretending to be a preyed-upon child. Merritt Weaver gives a strong, authoritative edge to her performance as Hansen’s manager, Andie Bender. Plus, Matthew Maher does a solid job with his performance as the eccentric Xavier Von Erck, the man Hansen uses to track down predators through chat boards and other means of online stalking.
Another highlight of “Primetime” is the editing and stylistic direction Oppenheim utilized. Fundamentally, this movie’s aesthetic is unabashedly Y2K-influenced. Sharp cuts with loud analog noises, fuzzy VHS effects and over-saturated neon colors reappear throughout the film, numbing the viewer in this heightened reality where the anxiety of the situations faced by Hansen and company becomes very tangible. Oppenheim also uses intense jump cuts to increase the tension, like when Xavier scopes out predators from his laptop. There is a particular scene where Hansen confronts a predator who reveals himself to be a rabbi, and the scenery outside of their faces abruptly cuts away. Their faces are then painted with thick shadows while their voice volumes are boosted greatly and the shot cuts between deep close-ups of the two. The scene was incredibly instense, creating an effect in the audience of uncomfortable terror simular to that of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” or “Mulholland Drive.” In a matter of seconds, the deep terror and anxiety of the situation becomes all consuming, and I, along with everyone else in the theater, could not look away, as if we were witnessing a horrific accident.
This is not a particularly long film, clocking in around 110 minutes, but it is fast-paced and intense. Throughout, Oppenheim tackles some incredibly relevant and often uncomfortable themes. Namely, surveillance and Hansen’s quest to destroy a seemingly intrinsic human evil are covered at great length. One of the best scenes is a pseudo-flashback of Hansen’s time covering child kidnappings in rural India, and it gives a great window into the mind of the protagonist. Hansen truly believes, to some extent, in the moral good of his show and his actions around it as a front against a deep, ancient evil that takes on a literal shape as pagan gods haunting him that continually reappear throughout the latter half of the film. The biggest and most impactful question asked by the movie is: “What gives someone the right to uncover and fight evil?”
The scene centered on the rabbi asks this question outright: “Who gave you the right?” are his exact words. What gives Hansen the right to dole out these punishments when he himself cheats on his wife and is on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Additionally, the prevalent banality of the end of the Iraq War is a consistent set piece in the background of the film, connecting our desires as Americans to uncover evil to imperialistic aims. Even if our mistakes are seemingly less intense, why do we—as personified by Hansen—think of ourselves as Americans or even just well-meaning people, capable of playing God? This is not to say that the predators get off easy in this film. They are portrayed as slimy and scummy. But these themes and questions raised about someone like Hansen are both fascinating and important to think about, and Oppenheim tackles them head on.
“Primetime” will be talked about for years to come—a project that deserves to be dissected to death in film classes from UCLA to Vassar College. It is willing to ask difficult, uncomfortable questions about our culture in a way that few other films can. The themes of surveillance and intrinsic evil alone make this one of the most captivating films of our time, despite it being set across suburban lots in the mid-2000s. “Primetime” is an intense, beautifully shot and edited film that asks the viewer to reckon with the uncomfortable truths that, for better or worse, we often hide or ignore.