The most revealing thing about Lance Oppenheim’s first feature, Primetime, is how he realised the cultural shift that happened back in 2006 meant absolutely nothing to the building of modern society. It was like a cultural void, a moment in time that had an impact on those who lived but was as quickly forgotten as it was unexpected. Where is Chris Hansen nowadays? Even the media landscape didn’t replicate the hallucination that was the reality show landscape in the post-9/11. We lived through it and have nothing to tell. And Lance Oppenheim, who was only 10 years old when To Catch A Predator aired, understands that. And is maybe judging us for it.
The story of Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) and his special series on Dateline NBC starts with an interesting moral conundrum. The victims deserve this even more. They were predators who were trapped by the production by thinking they were about to have sex with a minor, when Hansen appeared out of nowhere and said his iconic “why don’t you take a seat?” But outside of the cameras, Oppenheim takes the role of all the other predators that surrounded the program. Hansen himself, obsessed with his work and completely disconnected from his family, convinces the network execs to give him a prime time slot against the biggest TV show of the decade, Lost. The challenge that Hansen takes seriously as he tries constantly to one-up himself in search of the holy grail of reality entertainment: catching a government official. He’s aided by Andie (Merritt Wever), a cutthroat producer who revels in the chaotic amorality of the show she works on. There’s Xavier (Matthew Maher) as a digital vigilante who lures pedophiles by pretending to be a minor in chat rooms, and Del (Phoebe Bridgers, yes THAT Phoebe Bridgers) as a decoy girl who plays the teen that the men meet at home before Hansen appears.
And then comes Dan (Skyler Gisondo), a young actor whose boyish looks make him perfect for a new decoy. Dan wants to do musicals and is sort of thrown into the wolves with no preparation. A job is a job, but in the role of “the new girl”, Dan positions the audience into this weird conundrum that questions if what they’re doing here is morally correct. Sure, they are stopping monsters before they commit a crime, but doing it for entertainment removes the sense of justice their actions would have. There is no interest in creating a better world, only to beat Lost in the ratings.
There are two stylistic elements that Oppenheim employs that make Primetime work extremely well. The shots are a mishmash of different types, shot with over ten different cameras, from a professional digital camera to genuine broadcast cameras from the 80s (strangely, the TV sections look grainier than what I remember from 2006, but I suppose that’s how a kid sees the TV we used to watch twenty years ago). The more modern the camera is, the more Oppenheim uses close-ups and non-diegetic background or effects. It constantly merges what’s real and what’s fiction until the two are indistinguishable from each other, and it works particularly well.
The other element is the pacing in the editing. With the help of editor Daniel Garber, it reminded me of that middle section in PTA’s Magnolia when Job Brion’s score punctuates a sense of urgency, almost like a never-ending preparation for a heist that never comes. Downtime moments are few, and normally an excuse for a quick introspection before going back into the thick of it.
But it’s the three central performances that excel here: Pattinson, Wever and Gisondo. Pattinson evokes a lot of Hansen’s complexity without trying to mimic his mannerisms (a breath of fresh air after last month’s Jeremy Strong’s Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning). He portrays Hansen not as a moral void, but as a morally displaced person. Someone who believes in what he has set out to do, but can only do it with the incentive of a victory. Gisondo, on the other hand, is a confused kid who thinks he’s willing to sell his soul for validation. He has these adorable moments where, after his “acting” – usually so innocuous only he really notices it – he heads to the producer hoping for validation, even if he cannot help but know that no one cares.
But Wever is the star I wasn’t expecting, as a quiet and organised producer who spends most of the time managing her star, always with an eye on the final product. It’s hers, the final joke after the tragedy, a heartless comment thrown at the right time, that could only be pulled off by someone who has no shred of humanity left in her. She’s fantastic, and in a show that could’ve been just Pattinson, the scenes where she’s by herself prove how much gravitas she has.
The easy note is that Primetime is a vampire film (oh, hey, look at the logo, it kind of looks like two pointed teeth), but I think that’s a red herring. Oppenheim wouldn’t waste our time by making a film that conflates reality TV with blood-sucking living dead. It’s too easy. Instead, Primetime is genuinely a product of its time (2026) to reflect on a time where we’re still not sure how that product happened (2006). I don’t know if the concept would have worked without the talent of Oppenheim, Pattinson and Wever, but in the end, I don’t care if it didn’t. As a whole, it’s an intense experience about losing grasp of humanity. Twenty years later, the President of the United States is another reality TV star with even less compassion. It’s hard to imagine there was once a time when that was the anomaly.
The plus: Exciting to see a new young voice coming through with such confidence
The minus: In the middle of this compelling visual tapestry lies a very simplistic and reductive view of the world.