Lance Oppenheim’s highly-anticipated semi-biopic on the rise of Chris Hansen, and his infamous NBC Dateline programme, To Catch a Predator, finally released in the UK last week, starring Robert Pattinson, whose year is increasingly becoming one for the ages. The latest production from A24 is unsurprisingly layered, entertaining, and viscerally stylish.
The world-building that ensues is genius, putting the audience immediately into the situation that many have viewed previously, including authentically fitting pieces of archival footage from the early 2000s to further the intended narrative and create that reality of both the state of television at the time, and of the world itself. Grainy colour-grading and superb editing service this accuracy, with the cinematography becoming increasingly corrupted as the film goes on, both as a metaphor for the horrors it is portraying, but also the effect they have on those involved.
The first trailer was a surprise initially, I had anticipated that the story would be told viscerally and with style, but I had worried that the apparent psychedelic, spiralling, and hallucinatory visuals (akin to that of Vertigo and Don’t Look Now) and execution would overpower the narrative. Though this is the case for the visuals, in reality this was merely a stylistic choice that adds reflection and aesthetics that greatly accompany a grander narrative. This could be applied to a narrative choice introduced halfway through the film, that mysterious masked figure, the concept of “ancient evil”. The way this was visualised captures the horrific reality of child predation into an actual entity that Hansen is fighting against, one he is also wanting to escape by turning it into a spectacle. There is a confident implementation of the aspect of television’s intrinsics, a great obsession with network ratings: the hunt for that groundbreaking next big story, the ramifications of this are expertly portrayed in the obsession, this comes at the expense to others in the fight for popularity.
As was apparent even from the trailer, Pattinson is possessed; though his portrayal of Hansen could be polarising, of a cartoonish and slightly shallow nature, his mannerisms expertly balance eccentricity and paranoia. He offers a restrained yet layered turn that is marvellously fitting. Merritt Wever deserves great praise also, as the regularly-stressed production lead, but the performance of Skyler Gisondo is marvellous, confidently playing the metaphorical “prey” to the show’s “predator(s)”. The choice for his character to be a naive up-and-coming actor was well-executed, it is a narrative that is rewarding and rich, contrasting the at-times stone cold personality of Pattinson’s Hansen. The audience wants both to succeed, their balance an interesting one as the pair are two of the protagonists, cogs in the metaphorical machine; though the balance could be seen as simultaneously making the other’s story weaker, though layered, it is occasionally difficult to balance. Primetime’s conclusion is somewhat abrupt, though many would have anticipated how it would be finalised, it left a sour taste, becoming manipulative in its discourse of how to react.
A further reason for this being of interest was as a result of watching David Osit’s 2025 documentary, Predators, which entailed the darker side of To Catch a Predator in its audience effect and for those involved behind-the-scenes. While it is understandable that Oppenheim prioritised a dramatised portrayal of the show’s events, many could complain that it didn’t raise the ramifications. Predators addressed the claims made against the show: on the issue of entrapment, coercion, and the result of multiple charges being dropped or dismissed, Primetime prioritises a retelling, which is understandable, and allows the audience to have its own perspective. Despite these shortcomings, the film finds success in illustrating how the show’s exploitation of its decoys actually transforms those involved into the very thing they claim to be catching. A nuanced camera flip that displays the similarities between those behind and in front of the camera.
The style and atmosphere feels like being inside the static between the tv screen and reality. Lance Oppenheim’s filmmaking so brilliantly makes tangible the contrast between the absurd theatricality of To Catch a Predator and the darkness of what it was doing. Equally hilarious and horrifying. Chris Hansen is at once a complete caricature and a mythological figure who reads paedophilic messages back to their senders like scripture and believes he’s cleansing the world.
Ben Nixon
