To Catch a Predator may have presented a simulation of reality, but it was just convincing enough for viewers. The show’s objective was to apprehend people suspected of child sex abuse—which it did by staging sting operations. Its host, Chris Hansen, and his collaborators at Dateline NBC would sparsely furnish the entryway of some rented suburban home; an adult actor posing as a teenager would open the door for a stranger he or she had been chatting with online; and Hansen, who worked as a Dateline correspondent, would lurk in another room, waiting for the right moment to present himself to the houseguest and laconically intervene. His catchphrase was “Have a seat,” which he would utter while inviting his latest subject to take stock of the nightmare unfolding around him: He was suspected of intending to have sex with a minor, Hansen would explain, and now they were on candid camera—the police waiting just outside.
Hansen’s somewhat maniacal pursuit of what he considered justice was detailed in last year’s very solid documentary Predators, which explored the legal and ethical limits of To Catch a Predator’s blockbuster public-shaming approach. The new movie Primetime, a fictionalized look at the host’s meteoric rise and sudden implosion, also has a critical edge, but it’s much more interested in the weird version of real life that Hansen’s show created. The drama, from the director Lance Oppenheim, plunges the viewer into a sordid vision of early-2000s news entertainment—flashy, shallow, flimsy. And it revolves around an energetic Robert Pattinson performance that always feels a little sweaty and desperate to please the audience.
Primetime is a beautiful nightmare—and might feel seductive to anyone who wanted to work in the world of gaudy TV journalism in 2004. That’s when the first To Catch a Predator segment premiered on NBC. It was followed by another, in 2005, before airing as a more regular series from 2006 to 2007. When the program ended, it did so amid a legal accusation of wrongdoing (the case was settled) and questions about its ethics. But during the years it ran, popular culture portrayed Hansen as a righteous crusader. His method—ensnaring alleged sex offenders in online traps meant to expose their dark proclivities, before turning them over to law enforcement—made for satisfying TV, mixing the trashiness of Jerry Springer–style talk shows with the aesthetics of supposed hard-news journalism.
[Read: Jerry Springer explained it all]
Casting Pattinson, a true movie star, as Hansen should stack the deck in the character’s favor: He dazzles on-screen. The actor has long been drawn to playing nervy oddities or handsome devils with some insecurity simmering beneath the surface. He portrays Hansen as sharklike and occasionally charming, unable to drop the facade he’s created for his show. His smirk is frozen, his voice affected. He seems to be constantly preening for cameras that aren’t always there. Pattinson’s performance comes across as fake in just the right ways—it’s an impersonation of someone who was himself living as an impersonator.
Oppenheim primarily works as a documentarian, and has long been drawn to the anonymous-feeling tract housing and chintzy suburbs that To Catch a Predator made its domain. His documentary Some Kind of Heaven was about a group of retirees living in The Villages, a master-planned neighborhood for senior citizens; Spermworld explored the unregulated online marketplaces for sperm donation, for which people meet in motels to arrange DIY insemination. In Primetime, the director’s first narrative feature, the Dateline crew infiltrate similar types of communities to wreak gleeful havoc in the name of ratings. But the movie doesn’t condemn their efforts so much as it tries to understand how Hansen’s thirst for success infected everyone around him. (The real Hansen has criticized the film, declaring it “detached from reality.”)
The most captivating storyline, in fact, is that of a decoy performer. The aspiring Hollywood actor Dan Plumb (played by Skyler Gisondo) takes the gig because he wants a union card, then quickly finds himself dangled in front of suspected sexual predators with little warning. Gisondo’s performance is as sweet and guileless as Pattinson’s is intense and unsettling; Dan has mighty career ambitions, but he sadly fails to grow beyond his seemingly eternal youth and the specific role Hansen has cast him in. Caught between them is the show’s producer Andie (the incredible Merritt Wever), who suppresses any qualms about her professional ethics in search of the show’s next target.
Oppenheim imagines the tale of To Catch a Predator as a story of America. This is apt, considering how many stories about this country involve people pursuing success at any cost—one that typically ends up being very high. Primetime eventually careers toward disaster (drawn from the real-life incident that ended the show’s run), but any viewer can see that coming. More fascinating to behold is Hansen’s delight as he gets closer and closer to that grand catastrophe.