I had been waiting for Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime (2026) to reach Australian cinemas for so long that I managed to get into a relationship in the meantime. Naturally, date night meant a packed screening at Penny Lane in Moonee Ponds to watch Robert Pattinson hunt paedophiles. Romance is alive. It’s primetime, baby! 

Set in 2006, the film revisits NBC’s wildly popular Dateline programme, To Catch a Predator. Adult men arranging to meet children online instead found themselves confronted on camera by host Chris Hansen (Pattinson). Twenty years later, its cultural influence remains unmistakable. The proliferation of copycat predator-hunting channels across YouTube and livestreaming platforms suggests that the public appetite for moral retribution has hardly diminished. 

Oppenheim understands the absurdity of this arrangement. Rather than delivering a conventional biographical drama, he examines the uneasy relationship between investigative journalism and the commercial incentives that increasingly dictate its boundaries. Merritt Wever brings an unnerving composure to producer Andie Bender, while Skyler Gisondo lends a touching naivety to Dan, a young actor recruited as a decoy. Gisondo’s performance brings a much needed sense of humanity to the film, drawing attention to the psychological toll of these operations and the dangers faced by the decoys themselves. 

Pattinson, having an extraordinary year, is clearly enjoying himself. His Hansen is all rehearsed politeness and restless calculation, an almost reptilian presence. His imitation of Hansen’s voice is so unnervingly accurate you’d think he’d swallowed the man whole. He’s theatrical and increasingly hungry for recognition. I found that ambition fascinating, especially given Hansen’s actual career. Before To Catch a Predator, he was an established investigative journalist who had covered September 11 and already had several Emmy Awards under his belt. This was a man who knew his way around a newsroom. Oppenheim’s portrait of a journalist seduced by his own celebrity becomes more interesting with that context in mind. 

The film looks appropriately diseased. Its grainy textures and luridly saturated colours resemble a VHS tape left to bake in the sun. Even the editing seems slightly deranged, while the score ensures you're never quite comfortable in your seat. Oppenheim also has a wonderful eye for the absurd, finding moments of genuine comedy in the sheer awkwardness of Hansen’s encounters. It’s a gloriously ugly film, and I mean that with the utmost affection. 

Of course, there is a peculiar pleasure in watching someone get caught. Hansen’s interrogations invite audiences to relish a guilty man squirming, comfortably assured of their own moral superiority. The humiliation becomes almost ritualistic, with each sting promising the satisfaction of watching justice unfold within the convenient running time of a television segment. And really, what an extraordinary thing to package as entertainment.

I do wish Oppenheim trusted his argument a little more. Hansen’s infidelity is invoked as evidence of personal hypocrisy, but the comparison risks drawing a false equivalence. Cheating on your wife and attempting to sexually exploit a child belong to entirely different moral universes. His characterisation also feels heavy-handed, with his near-unhinged behaviour from the outset leaving little room to explore how his hunger for fame develops. While these elements offer some insight into Hansen’s psyche, the screen time might have been better spent interrogating the legality of the sting operations themselves. 

Yet questioning Hansen’s conduct and the ethics of these operations hardly amounts to defending the offenders. Accusations that Primetime is somehow sympathetic to paedophiles are especially tiresome. The men targeted by these operations were pursuing children. Their conduct is horrifying. But there is still plenty worth examining about television executives turning that horror into a repeatable, profitable format. One might hope our capacity for critical thought extends beyond establishing that paedophiles are bad. 

For all its heavy-handedness, Primetime remains a morbidly entertaining examination of the commodification of moral outrage. It makes for an excellent double bill with Nightcrawler (2014), another film populated by people who know exactly what sells. More unsettling still is our own position, comfortably seated, watching it all unfold.