An aesthetically good-looking biopic. Didn’t really compel me one way or the other, though.

Chris Hanson’s TV show To Catch a Predator is given NPC’s primetime slot due to soaring ratings. But this means he and his team need even more intense content to win over studio and audiences alike.

Director Lance Oppenheim has brought us both Primetime and You Can See Everything in 2026. The latter is taking the film scene by storm (not yet released in the UK at time of writing) and one can wonder if Primetime was a warm-up act? The film stars Robert Pattinson (The Drama) Merritt Wever (Christy) and Skyler Gisondo (Superman, 2025) and follows the developing fame of NPC’s To Catch a Predator. A show Hanson created in the mid-2000s, which rose in ratings as shows like Friends was in decline.

What polar opposite television.

I definitely did not watch (or know anything about) To Catch a Predator. I have no interest in televised intrigue about murderers and criminals. But, given the timing involved, Predator might be the turning point that made it a forerunner for the genre? Perhaps. Either way, I was somewhat interested. Plus Pattinson seems to be in everything this year, so what’s one more?

The story follows Chris Hanson (Pattinson) the host for To Catch a Predator. His production team includes his producer Andie (Wever) his online “researcher” Xavier (Matthew Maher) and “decoys”. The show’s premise… to honey-trap pedophiles, briefly interview them, and then have them arrested. All recorded for television.
Their rather surreal production machine is jeopardized when a new decoy is hired at the last minute, Dan (Gisondo) plus the show acquires the primetime slot. Plus… Hanson’s own problems with adultery come around to ruin everything…

As I’ve said, this isn’t my usual fare. But the trailer looked intriguing, and Pattinson is (once again) playing a creepy guy. Genuinely, the lengths the man will go to have us forget Twilight. The film opens with him “talking dirty”. So if that’s your thing, you are very much in luck. Although it isn’t him, it is a script; reading excerpts from the pedophile’s chat log with his decoys. Still, probably getting certain audience members excited.

No, the film is otherwise quite captivating in its cinematography. The entire film has a polarised, burnt-out appearance. All of the lighting is over-exposed, lending itself to a hazy look. Which was the most interesting element of the movie for me. Being set in the 2000s, this seemed like a choice to evoke the low-res HD quality of the time. Even with the occasional lens flare. The technology on show is accurate to the times as well, which was pleasing to see.

Given the subject matter, it is fortunately only a 15 certificate. It wasn’t nearly as unsettling or unpleasant as I feared it would be. Granted, it is an unpleasant subject matter, but we are following characters who are simply doing their jobs. This provides a degree of separation from it. Dan, the newest decoy, is in the line of fire. Yet even he is surprisingly unscathed from being literally dropped into an encounter with a pedophile without any prep.

If any of this is true, the 2000s were truly wild.

Which leads me to the problems. I have no idea how accurate this movie is to what Hanson and his team were like, or how accurate it is for their actions and agencies. Genuinely no idea. Chances are good that a lot of it is fiction. The team are largely seen as unconventional heroes; removing pedophiles one-by-one. Hanson’s crusade is one of righteousness, despite his darker edges. We hear a lot about his trip to India, where he supposedly encountered a true evil that targeted children.
Dan’s seemingly breezy acceptance of being used blindly to converse with potentially dangerous people, seems insane.

Ultimately, one thing is true. I enjoyed it for its visual fidelity and quality. The performances were good generally, although Pattinson didn’t chameleon into the role as much as he usually does (the poster is more transformative than the footage) But when everything is said and done… it didn’t really have an impact on me. As someone who doesn’t care for these sorts of television productions, I would expect to either despise this or be given a new perspective. Neither became reality.

Which is odd. Perhaps it was the distance provided by the filming crew’s perspective that dulled its empathy or emotional heft. Maybe having Hanson as the lead character, with his morally grey persona, made it harder to know how to feel. His cause is just. So why doesn’t it feel like it is?

Primetime is probably a good study for director Oppenheim’s style, especially in the lead-up to You Can See Everything. It is quite mesmerizing at times. It has such a gazed-over look that is quite distinctive. I wasn’t bored; the characters and their trajectory were intriguing. It was just afterwards it felt a little empty.