Primetime review: 'Robert Pattinson dominates as a slick but creepy TV host'

Primetime (15) ★★★★

Straddling the ethically murky divide between legitimate news programming, true crime and gotcha-style reality television, the rise and fall of the American TV show To Catch a Predator (2004-2007) makes for simultaneously queasy and gripping drama in documentary-maker Lance Oppenheim’s formally fascinating feature debut Primetime. Starring Robert Pattinson as the show’s slick but creepy host Chris Hansen, it transforms Hansen’s mission to use a candid camera-style format to lure paedophiles into the open with televised sting operations into an audaciously icky comment on the depravity coursing through culture as a whole.

Set just as the show was picking up mainstream traction and the network started to see its potential as a cheap substitute for expensive scripted drama (it was aired in the same time slot as Lost – something of a running gag throughout), the film charts how the pressure for ratings leads to ever more morally questionable choices on Hansen’s part as he tries to keep his own spiralling personal life under control following an affair with a much younger woman. That there’s moral hypocrisy everywhere is the point and Oppenheim’s oppressive style – hyper-saturated cinematography, uncomfortably intimate close-ups, a lush score cranked high in the sound mix – draws attention to the performative nature of modern life, something reinforced by mixing in judicious and inventive use of the show’s own hidden camera format.

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Though Pattinson dominates the film, he’s complimented by brilliant turns from Merritt Wever as his producer and Skylar Gisondo as an aspiring actor brought in to play the under-age decoy on the show. It’s through their characters’ journeys, rather than Pattinson’s quietly monstrous turn, that Oppenheim subtly tracks the deleterious effect of the show on the world at large. The end result is strange and provocative and marks Oppenheim (who’s also the co-director of the forthcoming, much-hyped Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything) as one of the most intriguing filmmakers out there.

Primetime is in cinemas from 28 October

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