Robert Pattinson Is Chris Hansen in A24's Primetime, and the Internet Has Thoughts

A24 has officially dramatized one of the most controversial reality-TV phenomena of the 2000s.Primetime, directed by documentarian Lance Oppenheim, stars Robert Pattinson as journalist Chris Hansen, the face of NBC’sTo Catch a Predator. Slate calls Pattinson’s work“a marvel of grinning grotesquerie,”which is a very fancy way of saying the man has fully committed to the bit.

The film doesn’t stop at Hansen. It shifts focus to the show’s decoys, the young people planted in those sting houses. Skyler Gisondo plays Dan Plumb, a struggling actor based on real decoy Dan Schrack, and critics are calling him the movie’s most soulful presence. Phoebe Bridgers also appears as decoy advocate Del Harvey. Slate’s review finds the film effectively scuzzy but argues the script leaves Pattinson without much of an arc, and it keeps comparingPrimetimeto David Osit’s documentaryPredators, which treats Hansen as neither the most interesting nor the most important figure in the story.

The movie also confronts the darker ending of the real saga: the sting that led to the show’s abrupt cancellation after a prosecutor’s suicide. With only 20 episodes ever aired between 2004 and 2007,To Catch a Predatorleft a huge cultural footprint for such a short run, andPrimetimeis asking whether revisiting it counts as art or just nostalgia for voyeurism.

Are you planning to seePrimetime, or does this one feel like a skip?