Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen in A24's 'Primetime,' a greasy, grain-soaked portrait of TV's darkest sting

The film grain feels filthy. That is, according to Variety's Jessica Kiang, a feature, not a flaw — DP David Bolen's images are 'so livid with grain that it feels like they leave dirt under your fingernails.' It is an apt description for Primetime, A24's psychological thriller about the making of NBC's To Catch a Predator, which premiered in competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on September 5 and opens in U.S. theaters on September 25.

Robert Pattinson stars as Chris Hansen, the journalist and television host who became the face of the sting-operation reality series, and the performance has generated immediate Oscar buzz. Critics who saw the Venice premiere describe a transformation that is both uncanny and unsettling — a portrait of a man who has constructed, and is slowly consumed by, a 'strange, performative version of himself,' in the words of director Lance Oppenheim.

He surrenders himself wholeheartedly to the erratic impulses of Hansen's persona in a fiery performance that feels as instinctive as it is intent.— Yasmine Kandi, Discussing Film

A new high-water mark for Pattinson.— Marshall Shaffer, The Playlist

The film is set in 2006, the year the show reached its peak and its breaking point. Oppenheim, whose previous work includes the documentary Ren Faire, structures the story around three figures: Hansen himself; his producer, Andie Bender, played by Merritt Wever; and Dan Plum, an aspiring actor played by Skyler Gisondo who joins the show as a decoy, pretending to be a teenage boy to lure would-be predators. The script, by Ajon Singh, is drawn from a 2007 Esquire article by Luke Dittrich titled 'Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die.'

The plot builds toward the real-life case of Bill Conradt, an assistant district attorney in Texas identified by the anti-pedophile vigilante group Perverted-Justice as a prospective predator. When Hansen, hungry for a high-profile 'whale,' breaks protocol and brings the sting operation directly to Conradt's home — surrounded by heavily armed police — Conradt shoots himself in the head while on the phone with Dan. The film's handling of that moment has divided critics: some find the matter-of-fact efficiency of the climax appropriately chilling; others find it an abdication.

The most frustrating aspect of Primetime… Its climax is depicted with such matter-of-fact efficiency that there is scarcely any reckoning with the price paid.— Martin Tsai, Awards Watch

Primetime never digs that deep, which made me question what this flashy but shallow movie hopes to achieve. It's exposing precisely nothing.— David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

Those are the dissenting voices in what is otherwise a strongly positive reception. The more common critical response is that Oppenheim has pulled off something genuinely strange: a film that moves, as IndieWire's Ryan Lattanzio put it, 'at the propulsive pace of a thriller, but has the style of an arthouse horror movie at its squirmiest.' Variety's Kiang describes Oppenheim as having 'designed Primetime as a nightmarishly claustrophobic 4:3 portrait of Hansen as a horror villain.'

The ensemble around Pattinson draws consistent praise. Wever, according to Kiang, is 'absolutely blistering.' Gisondo, whose character functions as the film's moral compass and slowly shatters, is called 'the true backbone of this story' by Kandi and 'a secret weapon' by Next Best Picture's Ema Sasic. Phoebe Bridgers, in her acting debut, earns notice from multiple critics, with Kiang calling her performance 'the second of the film's most impressive transformations.' Chris Hansen was not involved with the production.

It never swings its ravenous camera back on us; perhaps Oppenheim knows we're not ready for what it would reveal.— Jessica Kiang, Variety

Oppenheim has said the film originated from an unexpected source: his wife hired Hansen to record a Cameo congratulations video when Oppenheim released his 2024 documentary Spermworld. Watching Hansen pitch ideas in that video — performing a 'strange, performative version of himself' — planted the seed for the feature. He has called Primetime an 'adaptation' of that video. The project was announced in October 2024 with A24 financing and distributing, and Ari Aster producing alongside Pattinson. The connection to Hansen and To Catch a Predator was not publicly confirmed until May 2026, when A24 released the teaser trailer.

One recurring note in the Venice reviews is the film's relationship to David Osit's 2025 documentary Predators, which covered similar territory. Kiang writes that 'hot off David Osit's harrowing Predators documentary from last year, Primetime lacks for explicitly new insight' — though she and others find the film's value in its style and its unease rather than its revelations. The question the film refuses to answer directly — how did a show like this become primetime television? — may be its most pointed provocation.

Why it matters — Primetime arrives as a major awards-season contender from A24, with a performance from Pattinson that critics are already calling a career best — and as a film that uses the queasy spectacle of To Catch a Predator to ask uncomfortable questions about who, exactly, the audience for public shaming really is.

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