Primetime 15

"★★★★★" – BBC Culture.

Lance Oppenheim invites you to take a seat for this dark media satire starring an unsettling and cold Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the host of the 2000s American reality television series To Catch a Predator. The show’s researchers bait paedophiles into online chatrooms, luring them to “sting houses,” where they are filmed expressing criminal intentions. Before anything can happen, host Chris Hansen appears asking the abuser “Why don’t you take a seat?” With a primetime slot and incredibly high ratings on NBC, To Catch a Predator was a “success.” Primetime joins the likes of Broadcast News, Real Life, and Nightcrawler as films asking how we evaluate success and ethics in an evolving media landscape. Most notably, Oppenheim’s visually propulsive debut narrative feature is reminiscent of Network; 50 years on and questions about media ethics in an attention economy are more relevant than ever. The supporting cast includes Phoebe Bridgers in her acting debut, as well as three-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie, Severance) and Skylar Gisondo (Booksmart, Licorice Pizza) in a scene-stealing role as a struggling 20-something actor employed to play a 13-year-old boy.