“An entertaining film about our lust for negativity and sensation.”

“Nothing I do is acting.”

One gets the sense that over the last decade or so our obsession with pedophiles has grown out of control. Jeffrey Epstein, Pizzagate, your garden variety of politicians nailed to the post for fondling minors. While there is a genuine desire to rightfully put these people behind bars, the sensationalist aspect of this most horrific of crimes has the public lapping up news about every next pedophile case that comes up like gefundenes Fressen. The earliest excess of this obsession, however, was already on television in the mid-aughts. Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator, a show hosted by Chris Hansen, lured sex offenders in front of hidden cameras by using so-called decoys, men and women with tiny frames who could believably pose as young teens. After baiting men online in chat rooms, a meeting between the predator and his ‘prey’, the decoy, would be set up, where Chris Hansen would step out and ‘catch’ these men with their pants down (sometimes literally), putting on the kind of show only American TV hosts can. While the ethical and legal boundaries were already an issue in the brief period the show aired (it ran from late 2004 to late 2007), NBC did put the show in primetime for a while because it got incredible ratings. Pedophiles make for good TV, it turns out. Or at least the kind of TV that is successful in satiating the audience’s lust for lurid stories.

American director Lance Oppenheim now serves up the story of this sensationalist show and its winning-obsessed host as a mirror to both an audience that craves reality TV, the more sordid the better, and an entertainment industry that is all too eager to provide it. We catch Hansen (Robert Pattinson, in apt over-the-top mode) as he nails yet another man hoping to nail a thirteen-year-old girl, the show’s decoy Del (singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers in her acting debut; she and Oppenheim were roommates in LA in a former life). With a penchant for drama, the well-coiffed, sharp-suited Hansen descends the stairs like a diva, throwing out a well-rehearsed monologue to a confused guy (Tony Revolori) who salivated at the idea of having sex with a teen virgin. Behind the scenes, and following the action from a number of hidden cameras, the producer Andie (Merritt Wever) and keyboard-bait Xavier (Matthew Maher) lick their proverbial lips over such a salacious piece of television. It sells. The show is a success, which prompts NBC’s David Zaslav to put it on primetime opposite the ratings hit Lost. Hansen has made it to the big leagues, but just when his pedophile-hunter show might rule the world, he becomes the hunted himself when a tabloid gets wind of his extramarital affair with a young woman. With Zaslav on his case when the show is unable to beat Lost in the ratings, and the pressure of his already rocky marriage to Mary Joan (Anna Faris) weighing him down, Hansen is eager for a big ‘score’ to save his primetime slot. When a high-profile target in Texas appears it seems he might just pull it off, but a shocking turn of events spells the beginning of the end for To Catch a Predator.

Oppenheim realizes that the zany, scenery chewing antics of Pattinson et al., while befitting the characters and the film’s satirical angle, needs a counterbalance. That counterbalance is Dan Plumb, a.k.a. Decoy Dan, played by Skyler Gisondo, who gives maybe the film’s best performance. A young and aspiring actor with at best a speaking part in a national ad campaign to his name, Dan is added to the team because of his boyish looks. He is the film’s conscience, and in a way an audience avatar. While enthusiastically grabbing the chance to be on TV and desperately fighting to get credit for it, Dan is conflicted about the work he does and whether trapping these men under false pretenses is ethically sound or makes him the bad guy. His reaction to his final ‘victim’ committing suicide, and the realization that he was part of the reason for it, is the film’s most sobering moment, Oppenheim holding a mirror up to the audience and demonstrating what viewers who watch shows like these with feverish glee have wrought.

Primetime wraps all of this in a wonderful vintage package, with every frame hitting the right level of early-century image quality. The saturation is a touch up from what we are used to, and the images are blown out to just the right level to make the film look believably from its time. It’s somewhat of a gimmick, but for this film it works surprisingly well. Robert Pattinson’s wardrobe and haircut not only complement the visuals (what bad taste we had back then), but he also perfectly embodies the typical American news reporter ‘acting’ their role as serious person of authority. Nothing about Hansen is genuine, and Pattinson hits the right note to portray the insincerity, even if he hammers that note at high volume. Hansen wants to come across as a respectable news person, even though his show is sleazy. A recurring rivalry with news anchor Stone Phillips (naming your child Stone must be a form of child abuse in its own right) highlights the fact that deep down they are all actors playing a role and trying to ‘win’, a product of competitive US culture (small wonder a guy who talks about ‘winning’ all the time is president). Pattinson is perfectly complemented by Wever as the person who sometimes has to rein in the ‘star’ of her show, but in the meantime mostly cares about what scores on TV, regardless of the optics. She too thinks about her own career first, and the havoc created by what she puts on screen second. Anything that sells is good. Maher excels in a one-note role as a guy who seems to get a little turned-on himself when talking about sex with children, even if it’s only to lure predators. Gisondo has perhaps the hardest role as the most well-rounded and down-to-earth character. Blinded by the lights of Hollywood and the idea of a glamorous acting career (that his dingy motel room has a coffee maker already convinces him that he’s made it), he gradually comes to see that getting there means wading through seedy waters and ruining people’s lives, not out of genuine care but because it gets the ratings. Through Decoy Dan, Primetime adds a more somber layer, even if the criticism it holds up is facile and still rather surface level. An entertaining film about our lust for negativity and sensation, Primetime is a sordid satire that ought to turn people away from reality television. One can hope, but the film probably lacks the bite to do it.