The lights are hot, the hidden cameras are rolling, and somewhere in a rented suburban kitchen a man is about to have the worst night of his life. In Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, the trap is the show, and the show is hungry. What begins as a queasy comedy about television ambition curdles, scene by scene, into something closer to a horror film.
Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, the host of To Catch a Predator, at the height of the programme’s fame in 2006. It is one of the most unnerving performances of his career, and it arrives in UK cinemas this Friday after a month on release in America.
Robert Pattinson plays fame as a kind of possession, and Primetime watches the demon take hold.
Movie at a Glance
- UK release: In cinemas from Friday 30 October 2026
- US release: In cinemas since 25 September 2026
- Distributor: A24
- Director: Lance Oppenheim
- Writer: Ajon Singh
- Starring: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher and Bokeem Woodbine
- Runtime: 109 minutes
- Certificate: 15 (UK), R (US)
- Genre: Media satire and true-story drama with a thriller’s pulse
Viewer Match
- Best for: Fans of Nightcrawler, Network and stories about the cost of television fame, and anyone curious about Pattinson’s bolder choices.
- Maybe skip if: You want a sober, fact-by-fact account of the real show, or you find the subject matter too uncomfortable to sit through.
- Mood and pace: Lurid, hypnotic and increasingly nightmarish, with flashes of very black comedy.
- Cinema or streaming? Cinema. The smeared, heat-damaged colours and the storm-lashed final stretch are built for a dark room.
- Spoiler level: Spoiler-free: we go no further than the premise and the opening sting.
A Show That Feeds on People
The setting is the machinery of a hit programme. Merritt Wever plays the producer steering the stings, Matthew Maher is the man who poses as teenagers in online chats, and Phoebe Bridgers is the decoy who lures targets through the door. When the network moves the show into a primetime slot, the pressure to deliver bigger catches becomes the story.
Oppenheim, a documentary filmmaker making his first fiction feature, is less interested in recreating the real case than in mapping what working on the show did to the people inside it. The question is never whether the men in the kitchen are sympathetic. It is what it does to everyone else to turn their humiliation into ratings.
Pattinson’s Hollow Smile
Pattinson is extraordinary. His Hansen is calm, groomed and almost serene, and there is a gleam in his eyes as he waits to step into the room that tells you everything. He plays a man who has decided he is the hero of the story and will not be talked out of it. It is frightening, then sad, and finally horribly funny.
Skyler Gisondo is the film’s quiet engine as Dan, a young actor hired to play a teenager on camera. You watch his decency switch off, one compliment at a time, as he learns what the job pays. Bokeem Woodbine brings a burst of awkward comedy as a small-town police chief who is far too excited to be on television.
A Nightmare in Candy Colours
The film looks unlike anything else this year. Oppenheim makes the image bleed and smear like an old VHS tape left in the sun, so the movie itself feels contaminated. Early stings are staged with the flat look of 2000s broadcast news, which makes the later shift into something stylised, almost gothic, more disorienting. By the time a thunderstorm rolls in for the final act, the film has become a haunted-house story about a man trapped inside his own programme.
This is not a comfortable watch, and it is not meant to be. The subject is grim, the humour is very dark, and there are moments designed to make an audience squirm. That discomfort is the point, but it will not be for everyone.
Where the Script Slips
Ajon Singh’s screenplay is sharp on ambition and power, but less sure of itself elsewhere. A subplot about Hansen’s private life never connects to the main story in a way that adds meaning, and it feels like a detour from the film’s real interest. Some of the liberties taken with real events also make the picture feel more like a fable than an investigation, which will frustrate viewers who want the full legal and ethical story. The film raises big questions about entrapment and responsibility, then is happy to leave many of them hanging.
Even so, as a portrait of how television turns justice into spectacle, it is gripping and genuinely unsettling. It is the kind of film people will argue about on the way home.
Why It Matters Now
Twenty years on, the appetite for true-crime entertainment has only grown, and Primetime feels pointed rather than nostalgic. It is one of the boldest titles in a busy Halloween week at the cinema. Catch up on last week’s new films in our latest Weekly Cinema Pack, and see how it arrived in America in our Cinema Pack for 25 September. If you would rather stay in tonight, try What to Watch Tonight.
Spoiler-Free Verdict
Primetime is a lurid, gripping and deeply uncomfortable satire, lifted by a chilling Robert Pattinson and a superb Skyler Gisondo. The script wanders, but the film gets under your skin and stays there.
- Performances: 9/10
- Direction: 8/10
- Screenplay: 6.5/10
- Score: 7.5/10
- Cinematography: 8.5/10
- Entertainment Value: 7.5/10
- Overall score: 8/10
Star rating: 4/5
Verdict badge: Worth Seeing
One-line verdict: A poisoned valentine to 2000s television, with Pattinson at his most unnerving.
Watch the Official Trailer
Step behind the hidden cameras with the official trailer.
Should television ever play judge and jury? Share your spoiler-free reaction to Primetime.