by Flagg Taylor ’27 on October 8, 2026
A&E - Film & TV
Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim & co-produced with A24, made its debut at the 83rd Annual Venice International Film Festival. It received a seven-minute standing ovation and was nominated for best film shown at the festival. This psychological thriller follows Chris Hansen and his show, To Catch a Predator, which aired on NBC from November 2004 until December 2007. Hansen and his crew worked with the online group “Perverted Justice,” who fought against child abuse as well as local police departments.
In November 2006, Hansen and his team caught Louis Conradt, assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, TX. Conradt exchanged inappropriate pictures and messages with a decoy who he believed to be a 13-year-old boy. Conradt never showed himself at the sting house rigged with hidden cameras and a hidden Hansen, the show’s usual M.O. for catching predators. Instead, the Murphy police department and NBC crew went directly to Conradt’s residence. When they entered the house, Conradt shot himself, committing suicide. This incident sparked huge controversy and contributed to the show’s cancellation.
The film follows Hansen and To Catch a Predator from its early days, as it gained massive popularity, to the beginning of the show’s downfall, as the characters in the film begin to crumble internally. The film explores Hansen’s obsession with catching these men and touches on his relationship with his family. It also focuses on decoy Dan Plumb and his journey on the show as a young aspiring actor. Finally, its last plot strand follows the producer, Andie Bender, as she navigates the show’s success. Oppenheim and his crew use Hansen’s show as a lens to explore the complexities of making such a despicable crime spectacle for the masses.
Primetime feels like a fever dream at times; Oppenheim and his crew blend dark close-ups of characters with colorful abstract shots and emulate the grainy, hidden camera angles that To Catch a Predator is famous for. For the film’s primary camera, the crew used a fairly standard camera in the industry, but Oppenheim shot with an incredibly high exposure index that gives the film its grainy, nostalgic look.
This was director Oppenheim’s first feature film, although he is already a successful documentary director. I recently watched Some Kind of Heaven (2020), where Oppenheim examines “The Villages,” the world’s largest retirement community in Florida, containing 130,000 retirees. Oppenheim’s unique cinematic style shines and makes for quite an unusual yet captivating documentary. Oppenheim co-directed You Can See Everything with Nathan Fielder, another A24 film following Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, a fraudulent tech-healthcare company valued at nine billion, set to release Oct. 16
To help with his first feature film, Oppenheim turned to horror icon Ari Aster, credited as a producer. Aster is famous for directing Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Eddington (2025). Aster also produced Bugonia (2025) and another Robert Pattinson film this year, The Drama. Aster’s influence no doubt helped create the dark, sinister depictions of the predators and the rest of the characters’ disintegrating emotional psyches.
Beyond his technical crew, Oppenheim assembled a talented and fun group of actors. 2026 will be remembered as the year of Pattinson, and Primetime will be a huge reason for that. Pattinson co-starred with Zendaya in The Drama in April, played a lead antagonist, Antinous, in The Odyssey in July, and is set for another big antagonist role in the highly anticipated Dune: Part Three in December. Of the three Pattinson films out so far, his best performance comes in Primetime.
It may be the best performance of his career to date. Pattinson nails Hansen’s voice and mannerisms that we are all so accustomed to from his viral reveals in his sting operations. Pattinson’s performance gives Hansen’s obsession with his investigations a visceral feel, and paired with Oppenheim’s camera, the two create an intriguing discourse on the morality of making these crimes into entertainment. I would be shocked if Pattinson wasn’t nominated for best lead actor at the Oscars.
Skyler Gisondo steps into a darker role than his usual projects, playing “Decoy Dan.” You might recognize him from the classic Air Bud franchise. Gisondo and Pattinson worked well together, exploring the relationship between Hansen, the other adults in the crew, and the younger aspiring actors hired for this strange job. Merrit Wever was exceptional as Bender, the show’s producer. Wever connects Hansen to the corporate world at NBC and portrays the greed that came with the show’s success.
Bokeem Woodbine stood out in his role as Murphy police chief. Star musician Phoebe Bridgers makes her acting debut as another decoy working. She had quite a solid performance and meshed especially well with Gisondo’s “Decoy Dan.” The Office icon Creed Bratton makes a chilling cameo as a fan of Hansen’s, where he disturbingly describes to Hansen what he would like to do to the predators himself.
I highly recommend seeing Primetime in theatres. The film deals with incredibly dark topics, but somehow, it’s downright hilarious at times. It’s also a fascinating study of a post-9/11 America eager to see evil defeated and embrace a black-and-white view of morality. The film isn’t a direct attack on Hansen; it questions the concept of violent crime as a spectacle and invites the viewer behind the scenes of the people and organizations running these operations.
After viewing Primetime and Predators, a 2025 documentary about To Catch a Predator, I think the motivations behind the show and the execution of the operations can be reasonably scrutinized. To Catch a Predator led to plenty of arrests, but looking past that, there were many cases, including 23 men in Murphy, TX, where no actual convictions were made. In an age of Hansen copycat vigilantes all over social media, Primetime poses the question: Were the cameras necessary?