VICTORIA. — Primetime is a media satire, a thriller, and a horror movie. It’s also about the meaning of the word evil—whether it is best understood as a description of thought and behaviour, or a malevolent force.
In the end, it makes a stronger case for the second meaning. The characters all fall into one of two categories: the corruptors and the corrupted. Evil seems to be passed from one character to another like a sickness. Sometimes it hides in the dark, waiting for the next vessel to arrive.
Robert Pattinson plays NBC anchor Chris Hansen, the host of the 2000s hit “To Catch a Predator.” Pattinson has a rare gift for playing the sort of man who would toss an old woman over the deck railing of the Titanic to claim her spot in a lifeboat, and he’s been handed a motherlode of sleaze here.
Hansen’s program was controversial even before it got into legal trouble for perfecting what some considered vigilante entrapment. The producers used subterfuge and manipulation to draw actual and potential molesters into situations where Hansen could confront them on camera with evidence of their twisted thoughts and intentions and make them squirm before waiting police arrested them.
The movie introduces Hansen and his ambitious, cynical producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever) during a sting operation. This sequence and others appear to have been shot with broadcast news cameras from the period or perhaps altered to mimic their look.
The first target, a pedophile played by Tony Revolori, is drawn into a camera-rigged house by the show’s designated impersonator of minors (Phoebe Bridgers). It’s the culmination of groundwork laid by one of her behind-the-scenes collaborators.
Xavier (Matthew Maher), who poses as adolescent girls and boys in online conversations with possible molesters. Right away, the movie makes us wonder if the show’s vendettas can be justified even when they’re aimed at some of the least likable people alive.
Pattinson’s performance increases our unease. His Hansen shows no signs of having struggled with the implications of his job. In fact, one of the film’s unsettling constants is the gleam of anticipation in Hansen’s otherwise lightless eyes before he steps into the space where the sting is being conducted and lets the target sit slack-jawed in bafflement before quoting their own words from transcripts.
Primetime draws on earlier movies about media ethics, including Natural Born Killers, Network, A Face in the Crowd, Nightcrawler and The Sweet Smell of Success (the latter two, like this film, focus on dark-haired, charismatic hustlers who’ll do anything to get ahead). It alchemises its influences into something new. It’s grotesque, hypnotic, sometimes alienating.
It’s a work that’s meant to be taken seriously but not literally. It bears roughly the same relationship to its real-world inspiration as the story of Amleth does to Hamlet.
Primetime will rankle some who want a straightforward presentation of the facts, but those who want something bolder and more inventive, will find this completely involving.
Opens in cinemas this Thursday, October 29.
