Primetime: Chris Hansen hunts monsters and finds a mirror staring right back

I went into 'Primetime' expecting a single-dimension, straightforward drama about a television host chasing child predators. What I got felt closer to a horror film that just happens to be set inside a newsroom. It is grotesque, stylised and at times alienating, but it is also incredibly difficult to shake off.

Directed by Lance Oppenheim, who makes his dramatic feature debut after a career in documentaries, and written by Ajon Singh, the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It is inspired by the real-life NBC show 'To Catch a Predator', which became a 2000s sensation by luring suspected molesters into camera-rigged houses, confronting them with their own chat transcripts, and waiting for the police to move in.

Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, the polished anchor at the centre of it all. We meet him and his ruthlessly ambitious producer, played by Merritt Wever, in the middle of a sting. A decoy lures the target inside, the cameras roll, and Hansen walks in with a gleam in his eye that sets the tone for everything that follows.

Behind the scenes, Matthew Maher's Xavier poses as teenagers online to bait potential offenders, while Skyler Gisondo's Dan, a young and unknown actor, is brought in to pose as a minor on camera. The pressure is relentless, because the network wants the show moved to primetime to take on 'Lost', and every sting needs to be bigger than the last.

This is where the film finds its real question. The men caught in these operations may be disturbing, but many have no criminal record, which makes them nearly impossible to prosecute. The show is always one mistake away from destroying someone who is sick but not legally guilty, and the film shows how little that worries the people making it. 

When a powerful target, nicknamed 'The Whale' by the crew as if he were a prize catch, takes his own life as the police close in, the nickname alone says everything about how little humanity the production sees in the people it hunts.

Pattinson is the reason all of this works because he plays Hansen less like a journalist and more like an alien who has studied human empathy from a distance and decided to wear it as a costume. His inhumanity starts out disquieting, then becomes frightening, and eventually becomes darkly funny. It is a performance that makes you laugh and then immediately regret it.

The supporting cast is just as crucial. Wever captures the fake sincerity of someone who claims to have a moral code but decides everything by what benefits her career. Maher brings an obsessive zeal that easily curdles into sadism. Bokeem Woodbine adds an uncomfortable burst of humour as a police chief reading chat logs aloud like a teacher taking attendance.

But the film's real heartbeat is Gisondo. Watching Dan lose his sense of right and wrong, one reassuring line from Hansen at a time, is the most heartbreaking thread in the film. You can almost see the decency in his face switch off as the promise of a career grows. It quietly asks what a person is willing to sell for a foot in the door.

Oppenheim's visual approach does a lot of the heavy lifting too. Several sequences are made to resemble old broadcast news footage, while the rest of the film bleeds and smears its colours like a damaged VHS tape. It makes the whole thing feel rotten, as if the film itself is contaminated by what it shows. By the time the climax arrives during a violent thunderstorm, with Hansen being haunted both literally and figuratively, 'Primetime' has fully become a neo-gothic nightmare.

However, the film is not without its flaws. A subplot about Hansen's life as a serial adulterer never quite connects to the main story. It seems meant to expose him as a hypocrite, but cheating is nowhere near the horrors the show goes after, and it ends up feeling like a false equivalence. 

Pattinson is the reason all of this works because he plays Hansen less like a journalist and more like an alien who has studied human empathy from a distance and decided to wear it as a costume. His inhumanity starts out disquieting, then becomes frightening, and eventually becomes darkly funny

The legal risks behind the stings could have been explored with more depth too, and the script's liberties with real events may leave some viewers with a muddled picture of what actually happened.

There is also the matter of how much of this you can stomach. The subject matter is heavy, the style is deliberately repulsive, and some scenes, including a sting that ends in an awkward moment of male nudity, are the kind that make audiences squirm rather than buy tickets. This is a film that wants to be taken seriously, not literally, and it will not work for everyone.

Still, it is hard to ignore what it has to say about us. In an age of viral outrage, where a screenshot can condemn a person before any facts are in, the idea of turning someone's worst moment into entertainment does not feel like history. It feels like Tuesday, and it is a conversation our own country, with its appetite for public shaming and mob justice, should be having too.

'Primetime' is not an easy watch and it is not always a fair one. But as a portrait of how easily the pursuit of justice can curdle into a pursuit of ratings, it lingers long after the credits. And when Pattinson's Hansen flashes that smile, it is difficult to look away, which is exactly the point.